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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast, the podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Episode 234. I am your humble host, Thomas Roseland Weiberg Thun.
Tonight, we stay in California, and we even take a closer look at the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. Because the Manson saga is not simply the story of some rag-tag group of hippies attacking some rich people. Oh no, it is far more. The shiniest stars on the celebrity sky above the big Hollywood letters, on Mount Lee above Los Angeles, I'm deeply involved.
More involved, dear listener, than you might think. So sit back, relax, and by all means, have some popcorn. This episode, like all other sagas told by me, would not be possible without my loyal Patreons. They are Elizabeth, Lisa, Kathy, Corbin, Craig, Jonathan, Lunavar, Cheryl, Richard, Brad, Manuel, Ayulan, and Ricky.
You are truly the backbone of the Serial Killer Podcast, and without you, there would be no show. Patreon is again filled with ad-free episodes for my TSK Producers Club, and I also have a bonus episode I'm quite happy with for my $10 plus club members. It's a movie review, and this time the film in question is the serial killer film Long Legs. So don't miss out and head on over to patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast now.
The courtroom was charged with a different kind of energy. The defense painted a chilling image. The women, they argued, were not the architects of their own actions, but rather victims ensnared in Manson's web. They were pawns in a deadly game, their minds and wills manipulated by a master manipulator.
Manson's arsenal was a potent cocktail of drugs, hypnotism, and coercion. Like a dark scientist, he had experimented with the human psyche, transforming these once non-violent individuals into frenzied killers. LSD, a substance still shrouded in mystery at a time, was his tool of choice, granting him access to the deepest recesses of their minds. Testimonies from former family members painted a disturbing picture of Manson's systematic brainwashing techniques.
New recruits were lured in with a seductive blend of love, sex, and drugs. Their senses overwhelmed, their minds vulnerable to his insidious influence. A hush fell over the courtroom as the defense's narrative unfolded. The jurors' faces reflected a mix of horror and fascination.
The possibility that one man could exert such control over others sent a shiver down their spines. The defense's argument served as a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the human mind, its terrifying potential for manipulation and control. On the witness stand, Paul Watkins outlined the near-weekly orgies that Manson orchestrated at the spawn ranch. The leader would hand out drugs, personally deciding everyone's dosages.
And then, as Bugliozzi writes in Helter Skelter, Charlie might dance around, everyone else following like a train, as he would take off his clothes, all the rest would take off their clothes. Charlie would direct the orgy, arranging bodies, combinations, positions. Watkins said of these actions the following, and I quote, He'd set it all up in a beautiful way, like he was creating a masterpiece in sculpture. But instead of clay, he was using warm bodies.
End quote. If any of these bodies had hang-ups or inhibitions, Manson would eliminate them. Bugliozzi spun a tale of utter depravity regarding how Manson behaved. According to the prosecutor, he would force someone to do whatever he or she most resisted doing.
One thirteen-year-old girl's initiation into the family consisted of her being anally raped by Manson while the others watched. Manson also performed oral sex on a young boy, to show the others he had rid himself of all inhibitions. Tex Watson, in his 1978 memoir, Will You Die For Me, tells a similar story. I quote, There was a room in the back of the ranch house totally lined with mattresses, essentially set aside for sex.
As we had any inhibitions, we still weren't dead. We were still playing back what our parents had programmed into us. End quote. Having made them feel freed and wanted, Manson would allegedly isolate his followers from the world beyond the ranch, giving them daily tasks to support a commune, and forbidding them from communicating with their families or friends.
This was a world without newspapers, clocks or calendars. Manson chose new names for his initiates. Susan Atkins testified the following and I quote, In order for me to be completely free in my mind, I had to be able to completely forget the past. The easiest way to do this is to have to change identity.
End quote. Their induction was complete after they participated in lengthy LSD sessions, often stretching over consecutive days with no breaks, during which Manson only pretended to take the drug or took a much smaller dose. Clear-headed, he manipulated their minds with elaborate war games and sensory techniques he had developed into two years since his release from prison. With only negligible downtime between acid drips, detachment was all the easier.
Every experience led the family to drift further from reality, until, eventually, even basic contradictions seemed terrible. Death was the same as life, good was no different from bad, and God was inseparable from Satan. Paul Watkins claimed that Manson wanted to use LSD to instill his philosophies, exploit weaknesses and fears, and extract promises and agreements from his followers. And apparently it worked.
Watkins recalled an instance in which Manson told Susan Atkins and I quote, I would like half a coconut, even if you have to go to Rio de Janeiro to get it. End quote. Atkins got right up and was on her way out the door, when Charlie told her to forget about it. Manson excelled, Watkins alleged, at locating deep-seated hangers.
He took up residence in people's heads, leaving them with no point of reference, nothing to relate back to, no right, no wrong, no roots. They lived in a new reality, summoned by LSD, which left them, in Watkins' words, melt-twisted and free of pretension in timeless spirals of movement. End quote. The irony was as sharp as a knife.
Manson, the puppeteer, moulded his followers into automatons, all the while preaching that the straight world was nothing but programmed robots. Their beliefs, their morals, their very identities, were mere social constructs, easily erased and re-written. On the stand, Susan Atkins' words painted a chilling picture of this warped worldview. Sharon said, A vibrant young woman, a mother-to-be, was produced to an IBM machine, in Atkins' eyes.
Her words, her pleas, held no meaning, just meaningless code from a soulless machine. Tex Watson, another of Manson's disciples, described the family's initiation as a descent into oblivion. Drowning in LSD and Manson's hypnotic music, the recruits were stripped of their individuality, reborn into a state of purity and nothingness. They became dead in the head, their minds' blank slates, ready to be imprinted with Manson's twisted vision.
But Cliozzi, the prosecutor, faced a daunting task. He had to weave a narrative that acknowledged the psychological manipulation at play, without absolving the killers of their crimes. Manson's followers, he argued, were not innocent victims, but rather individuals with a dormant darkness within them. Manson, the master manipulator, had merely awakened that darkness, coaxed it into the light.
It was a theory that both fascinated and perplexed. Brainwashing, yet the brainwashed retained some semblance of their former selves. A paradox that continues to haunt us today, a chilling reminder of the darkness that lurks within the human heart, waiting for the right moment to emerge. When it came time to decide on the death penalty, though, the defense called a series of psychiatric experts who disagreed.
Manson had brainwashed his followers, they said, and those followers could not be held culpable for the murders. LSD had given him a portal to the most libel parts of their subconscious. The scientists explained how acid could break down and reconstruct someone's personality. How a sober, quote-unquote, guide intended to lead someone peacefully through the many hours of an acid trip could abuse the role, inserting violent ideals and beliefs into their minds.
With repetition and reinforcement, these beliefs took root and flourished, even when the followers were sober. Throw in other coercive techniques like sensory deprivation and hypnosis, both of which Manson embraced, and it was possible to rewrite someone's moral code such that she acknowledged no such thing as right or wrong. Booker Joel Fort, a research psychiatrist who had opened the nation's first LSD treatment center, was one of the defense witnesses. He believed that Manson had used LSD to produce a new pattern of behavior for the girls, resulting in a totally neutral system which saw death or killing in a completely different way than a normal person sees it, free of social concern, compassion, and moral values.
In one of the most remarkable exchanges in the trial, Manson's attorney, Erwin Canerac, asked Dr. Fort if a school for crime could exist, peopled with social rejects and fueled by LSD. I quote, Let us say with your knowledge of LSD, you have a school for crime, and then you take them here, and you program them to go out and commit a murder here, there, everywhere. Are you telling us that this can be done, that you can capture the human mind by such a school for crime?
End quote. The doctor answered in no uncertain terms the following, and I quote, I am indeed telling you that. End quote. Let us pause just for a short while at that, dear listener.
For if such a quote-unquote school could actually exist, the government would certainly make good use of it, and not always for good, such as reprogramming serial offenders. But the possibilities for military usage is certainly endless. However, aside from the infamous MKUltra project, no evidence of such mind control centers exist, and LSD has been around for a very long time by now. So even though the idea of a charming charlatan such as Charlie Manson being able to create a cult of killers through hypnosis and LSD is appealing, to me, seems far-fetched.
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Buy it with ACAST. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise. In his book, Helter Skelter, ugly OC grapples with this unfathomable riddle. How did Charles Manson, a barely literate ex-con, who had spent more than half his life in federal institutions, turned a group of previously peaceful hippies, among them a small-town librarian, a high school football star, and a homecoming princess, into savage, unrepentant killers, in less than a year?
Bugliosi conceded that he still did not have the answer. I quote, All these factors contributed to Manson's control over others. But when you add them all up, do they equal murder without remorse? Maybe.
But I tend to think there is something more, some missing link, that enabled him to sow rape, and bastardize the minds of his killers, that they would go against the most ingrained of all commandments. Thou shalt not kill, and willingly, even eagerly, murder at his command. It may be something in his charismatic, enigmatic personality, some intangible quality that no one else has yet been able to isolate and identify. It may be something that he learned from others.
Whatever it is, I believe Manson has full knowledge of the formula he used, and it worries me that we do not. End quote. The courtroom crackled with tension. Manson and his followers, their eyes burning with defiance, stood before the jury.
Bugliosi's words echoed through the hushed chamber, painting a chilling portrait of killers driven by an insatiable thirst for blood. Coursing through their veins, he declared, is the willingness to kill others. For the jurors, and for a nation gripped by fear, this was a truth they could grasp. These were monsters, aberrations, not ordinary people, corrupted by a charismatic leader.
The idea of brainwashing, of complete surrender to another's will, is too terrifying to contemplate. When you take LSD enough times, you reach a stage of nothing, Manson had whispered, his voice a chilling rasp, you reach a stage of no thought. But America craved a narrative, a story of good versus evil. Manson, the mastermind, pulling the strings of his...
He's unto breaking there and he'll never say he knows he's no one. But, You're bothivos and Campbell, he's a true one, impressionable followers. It was a tale they could understand, a villain they could despise. And so, when the jury delivered their verdict, death for Manson, Cranwinkle, Atkins, and Van Houten, a wave of relief washed over the nation.
Yet, in that moment of supposed triumph, the true horror of the Manson family resurfaced. The three women, their heads shaved, their foreheads marked with defiant axes, erupted in a fury of rage. You have judged yourself, Cranwinkle screamed, her voice raw with hatred. Better lock your doors and watch your own kids, Atkins warned, a chilling prophecy hanging in the air.
Your whole system is a game, Van Houten raged. Her words are a condemnation of a society that had failed them. Outside the courthouse, the family's loyalists echoed their leader's defiance. Sandy Good, Manson's unwavering disciple, stared into the cameras and delivered a final chilling message.
I quote, Death? That's what you're all going to get. End quote. With that, the curtain fell on the Manson family.
The nation, eager to move on, swept the gruesome murders under the rug of history. Seven innocent lives had been brutally extinguished, but the public clung to the comforting illusion that they understood the how and the why. The evil had been vanquished, locked away behind bars. And that, there is enough, is the canon version of events, easily packaged and sold to a hungry audience.
But there are, as I promised in episode one, twists to this tale. And to begin, one must only look at one suspect, the prosecutor himself, Vincent Bugliosi. His book, Helter Skelter, is the basis for the quote-unquote Manson mythology. But if you look hard enough and scratch at the surface, cracks appear.
And when they appear, they start to grow larger until the nice linear story falls apart completely. In interviews, Bugliosi claimed that he knew sordid things about Roman Polanski, husband to the butcher Sharon Tate. He claimed that LA police had showed him a videotape they had found in the attic of the Tate-Polanski mansion. On this tape was a pornographic video recording of Sharon Tate being forced to have sex with two men at the same time.
She is forced by none other than her husband, Roman Polanski. Now, listen, in order for this to make any sort of sense. We need to look closer at old Mr. Polanski.
Roman Polanski, born Raymond Roman Thierry Polanski on the 18th of August 1933 in Paris, France, is a renowned and controversial film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His life has been a tapestry woven with the threads of artistic brilliance, personal tragedy, and legal battles, making him one of the most complex and fascinating figures in the history of cinema. Polanski's childhood was marred by the horrors of the Holocaust. His Polish-Jewish parents moved the family back to Krakow, Poland, just before the outbreak of World War II.
When the Nazis invaded, the family was forced into the Krakow ghetto. His mother was killed in Auschwitz, while his father survived the Mauthausen concentration camp. Polanski himself managed to escape the ghetto and survive the war by hiding with Catholic families in the Polish countryside. These traumatic experiences would leave a lasting mark on his psyche, and often find their way into his films, particularly those exploring themes of violence, paranoia, and the dark side of human nature.
After the war, Polanski returned to Krakow and developed a passion for film. He studied at the National Film School in Lotz, where he made several short films that gained recognition for their technical skill and artistic vision. In 1962, he directed his first feature film, Knife in the Water, a psychological thriller that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. This early success paved the way for his international career.
In the mid-1960s, Polanski moved to England and directed several acclaimed films, including Repulsion, from 1965, a psychological horror film starring Catherine Deneuve, and Cul-de-sac, from 1966, a black comedy. These films further established his reputation as a master of suspense and psychological drama. In 1968, Polanski made his Hollywood debut with Rosemary's Baby, a chilling horror film about a young woman who suspects her pregnancy is part of a satanic cult's plot. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning Polanski his second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Then, in August of 1969, his wife and unborn child was murdered. Despite this personal tragedy, Polanski continued to make films. In 1974, he directed Chinatown, a neo-noir mystery film starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning 11 Academy Award nominations and winning Best Original Screenplay.
However, Polanski's personal life continued to be marked by controversy. In 1977, he was arrested and charged with the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse, the minor, and served 42 days in prison. However, fearing a harsher sentence, he fled to Europe before his final sentencing, and has remained a fugitive from the U.S.
justice system ever since. Polanski has lived in exile in Europe, primarily in France, where he has continued to direct films. Some of his notable works during this period include Tess, from 1979, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel, The Pianist, from 2002, a biographical drama about a college Jewish pianist during the Holocaust, and The Ghostwriter, from 2010, a political thriller. The Pianist earned Polanski his first Academy Award for Best Director, as well as numerous other awards.
Despite his legal troubles and exile, Polanski remains a respected and influential figure in the film industry. His films are known for their technical mastery, psychological depth, and exploration of dark themes. He has also been a mentor to many aspiring filmmakers and actors. Did you notice the part about raping a child, dear listener?
Because I did, and ever since I first heard of Polanski's crime, I have questioned the canon version of the murder of Sharon Tate, because Polanski did not just have sex with a minor. It was far worse than that. According to court documents and the victim's testimony, the rape happened on the 10th of March, 1977, during a photoshoot at Jack Nicholson's house. Polanski gave the girl champagne and part of a Quaalude.
Then he anally raped a child, despite her repeated refusals. If such a crime had happened today, Polanski would have been thrown in prison for a very long time. But the late 1960s and 70s were a different era. Crimes against children and women were not taken nearly as seriously as today.
To make matters worse, the 1977 rape was not Polanski's first. Far from it. German actress Renate de Langer told Swiss police that Polanski raped her in Gestade in 1972, when she was 15 years old. American artist Marianne Bernard accused Polanski of having sexually assaulted her in 1975, when she was 10 years old.
French photographer Valentin Mounier has alleged Polanski violently raped her at a ski chalet in Gestade in 1975. Polanski denies these accusations, but I have my doubts. The accusations have not been levied against him collectively at the same time, a long time after the crime. These are individual accusations levied against him years apart, and the women have no relation to each other.
According to court documents, an unnamed girl, who will simply be named Jane Doe, met Polanski at the party in 1973, when she was 16 years old, the year he would film Chinatown, four years before the 1977 rape. Miss Doe says that after they met at the party she accepted Polanski's invitation to dinner. She met him beforehand at his Benedict Canyon home, where he gave her two shots of tequila, while aware she was underage. Polanski later drove the pair to dinner at La Rastouin, located on La Cienaga Boulevard, the suit states.
Their table was not ready when they arrived, so they went to the bar and Polanski ordered more tequila for Miss Doe. After being seated for dinner, but before they ate, Miss Doe began experiencing dizziness from the tequila and went to the restroom feeling ill. When she returned to the table, she told Polanski she did not feel well and was going outside to get fresh air. Polanski followed Miss Doe outside and drove her back to his house.
Although Miss Doe says she does not remember how she got from the car into Polanski's home, she does recall him leading her to his bedroom, and that she passed out on his bed. Miss Doe remembers awakening to find Polanski in the bed next to her, and that she declined his request to have sex with her. Ignoring her plea of, and I quote, please don't do this, end quote, the suit alleged he removed her clothes and sexually raped her, causing tremendous physical and emotional pain and suffering. Polanski later drove Miss Doe home, and that was the last time she saw him, the suit states.
The case was dismissed after the parties reached a settlement outside of court, terms of which are not known. Quick question. When was the last time a display ad changed your mind? Now think about the last time a friend told you about something they loved.
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You're not buying impressions, you're buying influence. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise. Note, dear listener, that Roman Polanski is one of the world's most famous and respected film directors. It is also telling that so few of Hollywood elites are willing to comment on Mr.
Polanski's crimes. They all refuse to comment at all, especially those we know were good friends with him during the 60s and 1970s, such as Jack Nicholson. The case against Harvey Weinstein comes to mind, and also, perhaps even more aptly, the case against Jeffrey Epstein. Both cases started with a few allegations, but soon resulted in an avalanche of despicable crime committed over decades.
And quote-unquote everyone knew about it, and yet did nothing. And now they all wash their hands of it and pretend like nothing happened. It really is quite despicable. We know Polanski raped that poor girl in 1977.
He has repeatedly admitted as such, without remorse, by the way. But we don't know for certain the extent of his other crimes. Seeing how many allegations there are, I am tempted to remind you, dear listener, of the old saying, where there is smoke, there is fire. And with that, we come to the end of part three in this series covering Charles Madsen.
Next episode continues this expose, so as they say in the land of radio. Stay tuned.