Fifty years later, we’re still fascinated by the Manson family women
The girls behind Emma Cline’s debut novel ‘The Girls’
Even after 50 years, the Manson family murders — the glamour of the victims, the gore of the crimes, and the menacing innocence of the girls who wielded the knives — still hold sway over the American imagination.
Aptly enough called The Girls, Emma Cline’s recent debut novel fictionalizes that infamous summer of 1969, detailing similarly gruesome killings from the eyes of a 14-year-old drawn into a Californian cult. Cline’s book — bought by Random House for $2 million, as part of a three-book deal — taps into the enduring fascination with the murders.
In recent years, Manson and his “family” of followers have been the subject of a number of high-profile literary and cultural works, including Jeff Guinn’s widely praised Manson biography, as well as a successful podcast devoted to “Charles Manson’s Hollywood,” and even a Lifetime movie. But it’s Cline’s highly-touted fictionalization of life with the Manson family that’s been dominating the conversation recently.
Having drawn both praise and criticism, The Girls has attracted a great deal of attention because it capitalizes on an aspect of the Manson murders that often goes unmentioned: the grizzly killings were mostly carried by three young girls. And the crimes say a lot about 1960s gender and sexual politics, still mostly unexplored in popular culture.
But who were the Manson “sisters” actually?
The life histories of the three are strikingly similar. All experienced a painful parental disconnect during adolescence. Both Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel’s parents divorced when the girls were in their early teens, and both drifted into heavy drug use and alcoholism. Susan Atkins’s mother died when she was a child, and she eventually ran away from home in her late teens to become a topless dancer in San Francisco.
At 15, Van Houten and Krenwinkel left their Californian homes behind, both moving to San Francisco to explore the Haight-Ashbury drug-and-music scene. It was there that all three girls met the charismatic Manson, who was enjoying a rare stint out of prison. With his warmth and charm, Manson invited the girls to join his growing “family” of followers who hung out in the district, feeding them a cocktail of LSD, alcohol, and spiritual aphorisms — a perverse combination. It was this paternal nature in Manson made him magnetic.
In a highly-publicized interview with Diane Sawyer in 1994, the three women spoke openly about their later involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders, recalling the way Manson charmed them. Specifically, Van Houten recalled how Manson provided her with a sense of stability and normalcy, offering her “something to hold onto and call my own.”
As the Manson family continued grow into 1968, so too did these girls’ unwavering devotion to him. They all moved to an abandoned movie set and ranch outside of Los Angeles and established a self-contained commune, entirely removed from the outside world. There, he groomed Atkins, Van Houten, and Krenwinkel with a sustained toxic blend of LSD and alcohol, group sex, and his increasingly warped brand of philosophy.
By 1969, Manson was becoming progressively more paranoid, using the girls to channel his fanatical delusions about the outside world. It was around this time that Manson began talking about “Helter Skelter,” a race war he predicted unfolding between black and white America, one that would lead to a worldwide “apocalypse.” In the aftermath of this war, Manson believed he and his followers would be entrusted to take control of the world, with Manson as figurehead.
Unhesitatingly, Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Manson’s “right-hand” Atkins, accepted the vision and agreed to help him “ignite” this race war that would soon engulf America. Manson believed that it was only through a gruesome and very public display of bloodshed that the events of Helter Skelter would be sparked.
As Manson continued exploiting the control he wielded over the girls, he began giving Van Houten, Krenwinkel and Atkins guns, knives, and military supplies to store at the ranch.
But even before the infamous nights of August 8 and 9, 1969, Manson and two of his followers had already committed one murder — that of Gary Hinman, a music teacher and former associate of the family who allegedly owed Manson money. It was Atkins who was present and whose handiwork with a blade would soon paint her as a ringleader of the gruesome Tate murder.
Then that fateful night in August, armed with their black “creepy crawler” clothes, Manson drove Van Houten, Atkins, and Tex Watson — one of the few male members of the clan — to Cielo Drive to the home of a former music producer Manson wanted killed. But when they arrived, the girls and Watson found unfamiliar people living at the property. Still, Manson had instructed his followers to kill everyone inside and so the girls and Tex slaughtered all five people, including the then-pregnant Sharon Tate.
Perhaps the most grisly discovery from the murders was that Atkins had stabbed Tate sixteen times, delivering five wounds that were in themselves “fatal,” and killing both her and her unborn child. It was this image that came to cloak the murders in such terror in the popular imagination, as many believed it unthinkable that a 21-year-old girl could perform such a heinous act.
The following night saw Krenwinkel kill for Manson (since Atkins and Van Houten had already killed the night before). Manson had told Watson to make sure everyone “got their hands dirty.” Van Houten stabbed her female victim sixteen times, later using the victim’s blood to paint the walls with “Rise,” “Helter Skelter,” and “Death to pigs.”
At the trial, the girls’ courtroom antics — and brazen lack of contrition — transfixed the nation. At each appearance at the trial, Manson would script the girls’ behavior for that court session, including making them chant in front of the judge, laugh inappropriately during proceedings, or jump up and down unprompted. Manson fueled the girls’ commitment to the Family through LSD, which he had smuggled into the jail and delivered to the girls.
In January 1971, all four — Manson, Van Houten, Atkins, and Krenwinkel — were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. The Manson girls were the first females in California’s history to be given the death penalty. But only ten months later, California banned the death penalty and commuted the sentences to life in prison. At parole board hearings since, the women have appeared increasingly apologetic for the crimes, crying and apologizing to victims’ family members — a far cry from their previous LSD-fueled antics in court.
In April 2016, the California Parole Board recommended that Leslie Van Houten — having served 46 years in prison and now aged 66 — be released owing to her longstanding good behavior behind bars. In an excerpt from the Van Houten hearing, she was asked by the parole panel how far she would have gone to satisfy Charles Manson.
“If there were babies in the home, would you have killed babies, newborns, toddlers?” was the question.
“I think I would have if he’d have said,” Van Houten responded.
The news of the board’s recommendation provoked outrage, and it’s now up to Governor Jerry Brown to make the final decision.
As for the other family members today, Atkins died in 2009 at 61. Krenwinkel, Watson, and Manson — aged 68, 80, and 81 respectively — are still in prison.
More than 45 years later, the Manson massacre still lingers in the popular imagination — in large part because of the girls. At once wide-eyed and murderous, young and depraved, the three of them were like no kind of killer we’d seen — the grim byproduct of America’s 1960s counterculture.
