Manson Family also included a small, devoted unit of mostly impressionable young women and girls. According to Susan Atkins, whose initial statements in late 1969 cast the die for the template henceforth applied to the telling of the story in popular media, the Manson family began to believe, without question, Manson's claims that he was a manifestation of Jesus and his prophecies of a race war. They gained national and international notoriety after the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others on August 9, 1969 by Tex Watson and three other members of the Family, acting under the instructions of Charles
Charles Manson parole after California invalidated the state's death penalty statute in 1972. He served out his life sentence at California State Prison in Corcoran and died at age 83 in 2017. Charles Manson was born on November 12, 1934 to 16-year-old Kathleen Manson-Bower-Cavender, née Maddox (1918–1973), in the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was first named "no name Maddox". Within weeks, he was called Charles Milles Maddox. Manson's biological father appears to have been Colonel Walker Henderson Scott Sr. (1910–1954) against whom Kathleen Maddox filed a paternity suit that resulted in an agreed judgment in 1937.