I am no fan of Manson, but I think it is strange that everyone is celebrating the death of a guy who was clearly mentally ill. I also think he gets way more blame than he deserves for the Tate-Labianca murders, although I am not saying he has no culpability. I think his acolytes tried to lay as much blame on him as they possibly could to escape responsibility. He did not brainwash anyone. That is a story dreamed up by his followers that made for an easy case for the prosecution by getting everyone to flip on each other. The press ate it up because it was such a sensational angle, and it was amped up by those who wanted to use the event to demonize the free love movement and turn Charlie Manson as a poster child for everything that is wrong with hippies. No serious mental health practitioner gives any credence to the idea that Manson can brainwash anyone. He doesn't have his marbles together enough to pull that off. Later on he came to embrace the image that was given to him because he craved the attention.
Manson was a nasty guy, but he grew up in state institutions that were reportedly very callous. His mother was a 16 year old prostitute. He was a product of the society that he was born and raised in. If you read about his upbringing, you see that a life of crime was inevitable for him. Manson should not be thought of as a singularly evil figure, he should be thought of as a shame on the system that produced him. It should also be remembered that his crimes, such that they were, were heavily politicized by cultural conservatives to make him a boogeyman of the free love movement. I believe that some awful people are born that way, in that they do not have empathy, but I don't think that is true of Manson. He was shaped by his environment.
