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 to see if Freeman and Roberts were related to each other and found they were not. (Matches between Roberts and Manson were attempted but the results were reportedly "contaminated".) On March 12, 2018, the Kern County Superior Court in California decided in favor of Freeman in regard to Manson's body. Freeman had previously said he would have Manson cremated, and, in fact, did so on March 20, 2018. In 1974, Manson stated his religion was Scientology, and identified as a Scientologist after studying the religion while incarcerated. Manson completed 150 hours of auditing before declaring Scientology "too crazy". In 2009,