Charles Manson

Name at birth: Charles Milles Manson

Charles Manson was the most notorious mass murderer of the 1960s. A would-be musician and charismatic petty criminal, Manson found his way to San Francisco when the 1960s drug culture was at its height. He began to collect followers, and by the end of the decade he and several members of his "family" settled on borrowed land outside of Los Angeles. Believing he was a modern incarnation of Jesus Christ, and figuring he could benefit from a race war in America, Manson convinced several followers to go on a murderous spree in 1969, during which they killed seven people. The most prominent victim was actress Sharon Tate, the wife of film director Roman Polanski. The subsequent murder trial lasted seven months (at that time the longest and most expensive trial in U.S. history), and resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for Manson and his followers. (Manson was convicted of planning and encouraging the killings, even if none of them was by his hand.) California outlawed the death penalty in 1972, and Manson was sentenced instead to life in prison.