Charles Manson was born on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio to Kathleen Maddox, a 16-year-old girl who was both an alcoholic and a prostitute. Kathleen later married William Manson, but the marriage ended quickly, and Charles was placed in an all-boys school at age 12.

Rejected in his attempts to return to his mother, Charles was soon living on the streets and getting by through acts of petty crime. Over the next 20 years, Manson spent time in and out of reform schools and prisons for various crimes. He was released from prison on March 21, 1967, and moved to San Francisco.

“The Family” was a group of around 100 followers of Manson who shared his passion for an unconventional lifestyle and habitual use of hallucinogenic drugs, such as LSD and magic mushrooms. The Manson Family eventually moved from San Francisco to a deserted ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Manson’s followers also included a small, hard-core unit of impressionable young girls. They began to believe, without question, Manson’s claims that he was Jesus and his prophecies of a race war.

Manson was influenced not only by drugs but by the art and music of that time, most notably The Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter” from their 1968 White Album. Paul McCartney had said that the Playground slide in “Helter Skelter” was a metaphor for the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Manson, however, interpreted the lyrics of “Helter Skelter” as an invitation to begin a race war. He turned to the album and lyrics to justify his scheme and to guide his followers to murder.

Manson and his young, loyal disciples, are thought to have carried out 35 killings. Most of their cases were never tried, in part for lack of evidence. The perpetrators had also already been sentenced to life for the killings on August 9, 1969, and two more victims on August 10, 1969.

In August 1969, Manson gathered a group of his most loyal Family followers to carry out his massacre among Hollywood’s elite and “beautiful people.” The first of Manson’s victims were murdered at the home Polanski had rented, located at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, an area just north of Beverly Hills. Polanski was away in London shooting films, and the four victims had just returned home from dinner at the time of the murder.

On January 25, 1971, Manson was convicted of first-degree murder for directing the deaths of the state-LaBiance victims. He was sentenced to death, but this was automatically commuted to life in prison after California’s Supreme Court invalidated all deaths sentences before 1972. Manson was sentenced to life in prison and spent the next four decades behind bars.