Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time

by Nigel Cawthorne

  One of the few men in the commune was 23-year-old former high-school football star from Farmersville, Texas, Charles ‘Tex’ Watson. He had once been an honours student, but in Manson’s hands he had become a mindless automaton.

  Surrounded by these compliant sycophants, the drug-addled Manson began to enjoy huge delusions, fuelled by Susan Atkins’ studies of Satanism. She convinced him that his own name, Manson, was significant. Manson, or Man-son, meant Son of Man, or Christ, in her twisted logic. He was also the devil, Susan Atkins said.

  The lyrics of the Beatles’ songs were also dragged into Manson’s growing delusions. He was blissfully unaware that a helter skelter was a harmless British funfair ride and interpreted the track ‘Helter Skelter’ on the Beatles’ White Album as heralding the beginning of what he saw as an inevitable race war. The blacks would be wiped out, along with the pigs – the police, authority figures, the rich and the famous, and what Manson called ‘movie people’.

  Manson fancied himself as something of a popstar himself and took one of his feeble compositions to successful West Coast musician Gary Hinman. Manson also learned that Hinman had recently inherited $20,000. He sent Susan Atkins and Bob Beausoleil – another Family hanger-on – to steal it and to kill Hinman for refusing to put Manson at the top of the charts, where he believed he belonged. They held Hinman hostage for two days and ransacked the house. The money was nowhere to be found. Out of frustration, they stabbed him to death. Then devil-worshipper Susan Atkins dipped her finger in Hinman’s blood and wrote ‘political piggie’ on the wall.

  The police found Beausoleil’s fingerprints in the house and tracked him down. They found the knife that killed Hinman and a T-shirt drenched in Hinman’s blood in Beausoleil’s car. He was convicted of murder and went to jail – without implicating Atkins or Manson.

  Next Manson tried to get his composition recorded by Doris Day’s son, Terry Melcher. Melcher was a big player in the music industry and refused to take Manson’s material further. Meanwhile Manson’s followers formed a death squad. They dressed in black and trained themselves in the arts of breaking and entering abandoned buildings. These exercises were known as ‘creepy crawlies’. They were told that they should kill anyone who stood in their way.

  On 8 August 1969, Manson’s death squad was dispatched to Melcher’s remote home on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Melcher had moved, but this did not matter to Manson. The people he saw going into the house were ‘movie types’. Their slaughter would act as a warning.

  The house at the end of Cielo Drive was indeed occupied by ‘movie people’. It had been rented by film director Roman Polanski, who was away shooting a film in London. But his wife, film star Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant, was at home. Coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and her boyfriend Polish writer Voyteck Frykowski were visiting. So was Sharon Tate’s friend, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring.

  Manson ordered Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian to kill them. They were armed with a .22 revolver, a knife and a length of rope. Kasabian lost her nerve at the last minute and stayed outside. When Tex Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel pushed open the wrought-iron gates, they bumped into 18-year-old Steven Parent, who had been visiting the caretaker. He begged for his life. Watson shot him four times.

  Inside the house, Manson’s disciplines told Sharon Tate and her guests that the house was simply being robbed and no harm would come to them. They were to be tied up, but Jay Sebring broke free. He was shot down before he could escape. Fearing they were all going to be killed, Voyteck Frykowski attacked Watson, who beat him to the ground with the pistol butt. In a frenzy, the girls stabbed him to death. There were 51 stab wounds on his body.

  Abigail Folger also made a break for it. But Krenwinkel caught up with her halfway across the lawn. She knocked her to the ground and Watson stabbed her to death.

  Sharon Tate begged for the life of her unborn child. But Susan Atkins showed no mercy. She stabbed her 16 times. Tate’s mutilated body was tied to Sebring’s corpse. The killers spread an American flag across the couch and wrote the word ‘pig’ on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood. They changed their bloody clothes, collected their weapons and made their way back to the Spahn Ranch.

  Manson got high on marijuana and read the reports of the murders in the newspapers as if they were reviews. To celebrate this great victory, he had an orgy with his female followers. But soon he craved more blood.

  On 10 August, Manson randomly selected a house in the Silver Lake area and broke in. Forty-four-year-old grocery-store owner Leno LaBianca and his 38-year-old wife Rosemary, who ran a fashionable dress shop, awoke to find Manson holding a gun to their faces. He tied them up, telling them they would not be harmed. He only intended to rob them.

  He took LaBianca’s wallet and went outside to the car where the rest of his followers, including 23-year-old Steve Grogan, were waiting. Manson sent Tex Watson, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel back into the LaBiancas’ house. He said that he was going to the house next door to murder its occupants. Instead, he drove home.

  Watson did as he was told. He dragged Leno LaBianca into the living-room, stabbed him to death and left the knife sticking out of his throat. Meanwhile, Van Houten and Krenwinkel stabbed the helpless Mrs LaBianca as they chanted a murderous mantra. They used their victim’s blood to write more revolutionary slogans on the walls. Then the three killers took a shower together.

  The killers thought of their senseless slayings as a joke. They also expected them to set off ‘helter skelter’, the great revolutionary race war. When it did not, they knew they were in danger and the Family began to break up.

  Susan Atkins turned back to prostitution to support herself. She was arrested and, in prison, she boasted to another inmate about the killings. When the police questioned her, she blamed Manson.

  On 15 October 1969, Manson was arrested and charged with murder. Basking in publicity, Manson portrayed himself as the baddest man on Earth and boasted that he had been responsible for 35 other murders. But at his trial he pointed out a simple truth.

  ‘I’ve killed no one,’ he told the jury. ‘I’ve ordered no one to be killed. These children who come to you with their knives, they’re your children. I didn’t teach them – you did.’

  It did not make any difference. He, Beausoleil, Atkins, Krenwinkel, Van Houten, Watson and Grogan were all sentenced to death in the gas chamber. But before the sentence could be carried out, the death penalty was abolished in California. Manson and his followers had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment and they are now eligible for parole. So far, only Steven Grogan has been granted it.

  Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel have all got skilful lawyers working on legal loopholes. Susan Atkins became a born-again Christian and like Leslie Van Houten she became a model prisoner, although she was denied parole for the eleventh time in 2005. At the California Institute for Women in Frontera, Van Houten, who was denied parole in 2004, graduated with degrees in literature and psychology. She could also argue that she did not actually kill anybody. She stabbed Mrs LaBianca, but only after she was dead. Even Vincent Bugliosi conceded that the three women will be released eventually.

  Tex Watson has less of a chance. He was doing well when he found God and became assistant pastor at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo. But he made Bruce Davis, another Family member, as his assistant, and Kay suspected he was trying to build himself a powerbase in prison. Watson was denied parole in 2005 and is now working, inside, as a motor mechanic.

  Former Family member Lynette Fromme made a half-hearted attempt to get Manson out in 1975 when she pulled a gun on US President Gerald Ford. But she did not pull the trigger and succeeded only in putting Manson back in the headlines again.

  Manson constantly asks for parole. He does it, not because he has a reasonable chance of getting out, but because it gains him publicity. He revels in his image as
the ‘baddest man on Earth’.

  Stephen Kay, a Los Angeles County district attorney who worked as Vincent Bugliosi’s assistant during the trial, keeps an eye on the parole hearings and turns up to oppose any release. In 1981, at a parole hearing, Manson said that Kay would be murdered in the car park as he left. But he was present again, alive and well, for the next parole board hearing.

  The following year, Manson was transferred to a maximum security cell at Vacaville prison after the authorities learned he was planning an escape by hot-air balloon. A ballooning catalogue, a rope, a hacksaw and a container of flammable liquid were found in the jail.

  At one parole board hearing, Manson was asked why he unravelled his socks and used the yarn to make into woollen scorpions. He rose from his seat and said quite seriously: ‘From the world of darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment.’

  Parole was refused.

  In 1986, Manson’s parole request was opposed by California’s governor George Deukmejian. In response, Manson read a 20-page hand-written statement which was described, by those who heard it, as ‘bizarre and rambling’. Three years later he refused to appear before the parole board because he was made to wear manacles. These, he said, made the board think he was dangerous.

  In 1992, his hearing was held within hours of the first execution held in California for over a decade. Of course, Manson’s death sentence cannot be reinstated. Nevertheless, Manson did not do his chances of getting parole much good when he told the parole board: ‘There’s no one as bad as me. I am everywhere. I am down in San Diego Zoo. I am in your children. Someone had to be insane. We can’t all be good guys. They’ve tried to kill me thirty or forty times in prison. They’ve poured fire over me. They haven’t found anyone badder than me because there is no one as bad as me – and that’s a fact.’

  The truth is, Manson will never be allowed out.

  Chapter 7

  The Moors Murderers

  Name: Ian Brady

  Accomplice: Myra Hindley

  Nationality: English

  Number of victims: 5 killed

  Reign of terror: 1963–65

  Favoured method of killing: torture, sexual perversion, strangulation

  Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s bizarre and deviant sexual relationship drove them to torture and murder defenceless children for pleasure in a case that appalled the world.

  When 19-year-old Myra Hindley met Ian Brady in January 1961 he was already deeply disturbed. He was 21 years old and worked as a stock clerk at Millwards, a chemical company in Manchester, but his mind was full of sadistic fantasies. He had a collection of Nazi memorabilia and recordings of Nazi rallies. In his lunch hour, he read Mein Kampf and studied German grammar. He believed in the rightness of the Nazi cause and regretted only that he could not join in its sadistic excesses.

  Myra Hindley had problems of her own. When she was 15, her boyfriend had died. She could not sleep for days afterwards and eventually turned to the Catholic Church for consolation. She was known as a loner and a daydreamer although at school it was noted that she was tough, aggressive and rather masculine, enjoying contact sports and judo. But that hardly made her suited to working life in 1950s Britain. After a series of menial jobs, she became a typist at Millwards, where she met Brady. He impressed her immediately. Most of the men she knew she considered immature. But Brady was well-dressed and rode a motorbike. Everything about him fascinated her. ‘Ian wore a black shirt today and looked smashing… l love him,’ she confided to her diary.

  For nearly a year Brady took no notice of her. ‘The pig. He didn’t even look at me today,’ she wrote more than once.

  Finally, in December 1961, he asked her out. ‘Eureka!’ her diary says. ‘Today we have our first date. We are going to the cinema.’ The film was Judgment at Nuremberg.

  Soon Hindley had surrendered her virginity to Brady. She was madly in love with him and was writing schoolgirlishly: ‘I hope Ian and I love each other all our lives and get married and are happy ever after.’

  But their relationship was far more sophisticated than that. Hindley was Brady’s love slave. He talked to her of sexual perversions and lent her books on Nazi atrocities. They took pornographic photographs of each other and kept them in a scrapbook. Some showed the weals of a whip across her buttocks.

  Hindley gave up babysitting and going to church. Within six months, Brady had moved in with Hindley who lived (with her dog) in her grandmother’s house on the outskirts of Manchester. A frail woman, Hindley’s grandmother spent most of her time in bed, giving them the run of the place. Brady persuaded Hindley to bleach her hair a Teutonic blonde and dressed her in leather skirts and high-heeled boots. He called her Myra Hess – or Hessie – after sadistic concentration camp guard Irma Grese.

  Hindley became hard and cruel, doing anything Brady asked. She did not even balk at procuring children for him to abuse, torture and kill. The first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade who disappeared on her way to a dance on 12 July 1963. Somehow they managed to persuade her to walk up to the nearby Saddleworth Moor, an isolated, windswept part of the Peak Districk National Park, where they killed and buried her in a shallow grave.

  Four months later, Hindley hired a car and abducted 12-year-old John Kilbride. When she returned the car, it was covered in peaty mud from the moors. Brady and Hindley laughed when they read about the massive police operation to find the missing boy.

  In May 1964, Hindley bought a car of her own, a white Mini van. The following month, 12-year-old Keith Bennett went missing. He too was buried on Saddleworth Moor. At Brady’s behest, Hindley joined a local gun club and bought pistols for them both. They would go up to the moors for practice. While they were there they would visit the graves of their victims. They would photograph each other kneeling on them.

  On 26 December 1964, they abducted 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey. This time they were determined to hurt their defenceless victim as much as possible. They forced her to pose nude for pornographic photographs. Then they tortured her, recording her screams, before strangling her and burying her with the others on Saddleworth Moor.

  Even this did not satisfy the depraved Brady. He wanted to extend his evil empire. He aimed to recruit Myra’s teenage brother-in-law, David Smith. Brady began to systematically corrupt Smith. He showed the youth his guns and talked to him about robbing a bank. He lent him books about the Marquis de Sade and got him to copy out quotations. ‘Murder is a hobby and a supreme pleasure’ and ‘People are like maggots, small, blind, worthless fish-bait’ Smith wrote in an exercise book under Brady’s guidance.

  Brady believed he could lure anyone into his world of brutality and murder. He bragged to Smith about the murders he had already committed, saying he had photographs to prove it. They were drinking at the time and Smith thought Brady was joking.

  Brady decided to prove what he was saying – and ensnare Smith into his vicious schemes by making him a party to murder. On 6 October 1965 Brady and Hindley picked up 17-year-old homosexual Edward Evans in a pub in Manchester and took him home. Smith had been invited to visit around midnight.

  He was in the kitchen, he heard a cry from the next room. Then Hindley called to him: ‘Help him, Dave.’

  Smith rushed through into the living-room to find Evans in a chair with Brady astride him. Brady had an axe in his hands and was smashing it down on the boy’s head. He hit him again and again – at least 14 times.

  ‘That’s it, it’s the messiest,’ Brady said with some satisfaction. ‘Usually it takes only one blow.’

  He handed the axe to the dumbstruck Smith. This was a simple attempt to incriminate Smith by making him put his fingerprints on the murder weapon. Although Smith was terrified by what he had seen, he helped clean up the blood, while Brady and Hindley wrapped the body in a plastic sheet. The couple made jokes about the murder as they carried the corpse upstairs to a bedroom.

  Hindley made a pot of tea and they all sat down.
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  ‘You should have seen the look on his face,’ said Hindley, flushed with excitement, and she started reminiscing about the previous murders.

  Smith could not believe all this was happening, but he realised that if he showed any sign of disgust or outrage he would be their next victim. After a decent interval, he made his excuses and left. When he got back to his flat, he was violently ill.

  He told his wife and she urged him to go to the police. Armed with a knife and a screwdriver, they went out to a phonebox at dawn and reported the murder. A police car picked up Smith and his wife and, at the station, the terrified 17-year-old told his lurid story to unbelieving policemen. At 8.40 a.m., the police dropped round to Hindley’s house to check Smith’s story out. To their horror, they found Edward Evans’s battered body in the back bedroom.

  Brady admitted killing Evans, but said it had happened during an argument and tried to implicate Smith. Hindley only said: ‘My story is the same at Ian’s… Whatever he did, I did.’

  The only time she showed any emotion was when she was told that her dog had died.

  ‘You fucking murderers,’ she screamed at the police.

  The police found a detailed plan that Brady had drawn up for the removal from the house of all clues to Evans’s murder. One of the items mentioned was, curiously, Hindley’s prayer book. When the police examined the prayer book, they found a left luggage ticket from Manchester station stuck down the spine. At the left luggage office, they found two suitcases which contained books on sexual perversion, coshes and pictures of Lesley Ann Downey naked and gagged. There was also the tape of her screams, which was later played to the stunned court-room at Chester Assizes. Other photographs showed Hindley posing beside graves on Saddleworth Moor. These helped the police locate the bodies of Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride.