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Victims. 9+ murdered by proxy. Signature. Charles Milles Manson ( né Maddox; November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal, cult leader and musician who led the Manson Family, a cult based in California, in the late 1960s. Some of the members committed a series of at least nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969.
- Overview
- Spahn Welcomed the Manson Family's Help and Company
- Ranch's Isolation Fostered Paranoia
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The former Western movie set provided shelter—and isolation—as Charles Manson and his followers plotted the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and others.
Spahn Movie Ranch was once used as a Hollywood TV and movie set for family-friendly productions, including “Bonanza” and “The Lone Ranger,” but the isolated, run-down property may be best known for playing a role in one of America’s most notorious real-life crimes.
After being evicted from the cabin of Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys fame, convicted murderer and cult leader Charles Manson and his followers found their way onto the Los Angeles County ranch, where they made the acquaintance of owner George Spahn.
“Spahn had owned the ranch since 1948, but by the time the Manson Family arrived, he was 81 years old and blind,” says James Buddy Day, author of Hippie Cult Leader: The Last Words of Charles Manson. “George liked Charlie, and they came to an understanding that Manson and the women would work the ranch in exchange for being allowed to stay.”
According to Day, it was Susan “Sadie” Atkins, one of those convicted in the August 9, 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, who discovered Spahn Ranch sometime in 1967.
“The Manson Family moved onto the ranch gradually, first staying at a nearby church, then squatting in the empty shacks along the riding trails from time to time,” he says.
This is a typical abandoned cabin in Spahn Ranch, a former movie ranch north of Los Angeles, photographed in December 1969.
In a 1970 Esquire magazine article, author Gay Talese wrote that Spahn Ranch was not so much a ranch as it was “the old Western movie set it once was. The row of empty buildings extending along the dirt road toward Spahn’s shack—decaying structures with faded signs marking them as a saloon, a barbershop, a café, a jail, and a carriage house—all were constructed many years ago as Hollywood settings for cowboy brawls and Indian ambushes.”
Talese reported that Spahn liked Manson: “Manson would visit his shack on quiet afternoons and talk for hours about deep philosophical questions, subjects that bewildered the old man but interested him, relieving the loneliness.”
Claudia Verhoeven, an associate professor of history at Cornell University who teaches a course on the Manson murders, says the family helped out on the ranch, cleaning, cooking, making repairs and taking care of the horses, including renting them out to tourists.
1 / 10: AP Photo
Interior view of the kitchen at Spahn Ranch where the Manson Family lived, photographed in October 1969.
“The ranch really isolated the women,” Day adds. “There were no books, clocks or calendars. They became increasingly reliant on each other, which enabled their eventual feelings of paranoia and fear, all culminating in the murders.”
According to Verhoeven, in the beginning, the Manson Family’s stay at Spahn Ranch was akin to a fairly typical commune experience.
“The fact that Spahn Ranch was an old movie set did certainly accentuate certain aspects of family life, especially what they called ‘magical mystery’ touring,” she says. “Because Spahn Ranch was a film set, the setting supported the family in experimental, improvisational, make-believe living. They would play-act roles: cowboys one day, pirates the next.”
In fact, Day adds, the first few years of the commune were quite tranquil.
“All the people I’ve met have good memories of that time,” he says. “Things changed in the spring of 1969 when Manson and Tex Watson became involved in a bad drug deal involving a man they thought was a member of the Black Panthers political party. This began a spiral of paranoia, and the group became fearful of outsiders—especially the Black Panthers.”
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- Lesley Kennedy
- 4 min
- Dennis Wilson’s House. Dennis Wilson was a musician, singer and songwriter who helped found the insanely popular group known as the Beach Boys. Wilson was briefly associated with Manson by sheer happenstance in 1968 when he noticed two female hitchhikers walking down the side of the road one day in Malibu.
- The “Yellow Submarine” | Canoga Park, CA. This was a location that was used by the Manson Family as a temporary home. Manson rented the property in early 1969 when he needed a place to live and dubbed it the “Yellow Submarine” in part due to its canary yellow color and the popular Beatles song.
- 28 Clubhouse Avenue | Venice, CA. This site was used as a home for the Manson Family prior to the Spahn Ranch. The beautiful 3-bedroom, 2-bath classic beach house was the home of an associate of the Manson Family’s by the name of Mark Ross.
- Hinman House | Pacific Palisades, CA. Gary Hinman was a music teacher who had a previous affiliation with the Manson Family at the time of his murder. According to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, Hinman’s murder was the first in a series that set off the “Helter Skelter” murder spree.
1968–1969: Manson Family headquarters. Spahn was 80 years old, going blind and living at his ranch when he allowed the Manson Family to move in, rent-free, in exchange for labor. The family did daily chores and helped run the horse-rental business, which had become Spahn's main source of income.
- 22 ha (55 acres)
- United States
- 1947
- California
Oct 22, 2014 · The Spahn movie ranch, shown December 11, 1969, where Charles Manson and his “family” of hippies lived at the time actress Sharon Tate and seven others were slain.
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Mar 6, 2024 · MARSHALL COUNTY, W.Va. ( WTRF) — One small Marshall County town served as one of the childhood homes of the man who is perhaps the 20th century’s most infamous serial killers, Charles Manson. Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on Nov. 12, 1934. His mother was a 16-year-old runaway girl named Kathleen Maddox and his father, whom he likely ...
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