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 on as apprentices. Manson was arrested two weeks later during a nighttime raid on a Peoria store. In the investigation that followed, he was linked to his two earlier armed robberies. He was sent to the Indiana Boys School, a strict reform school. He later claimed that other students raped him with the encouragement of a staff member. Manson developed a self-defense technique he later called the "insane game". When he was physically unable to defend himself he would screech, grimace and wave his arms to convince aggressors that he was insane. After a number of failed attempts, he escaped