In March 1967, Charles Manson was released from prison, he was 32 years old. The world had changed from the one he knew, he went to Haight Ashbury, now the hippie area of San Francisco, a girl walked up to him, offered him a flower and said "Love". Charles stood and thought for a minute then said to himself, 'I could run with this idea'. With his guitar, he fitted in well with the hippie scene, he learned about drugs and how he could use them to influence people. In time he established his own cult called 'The Family' and in it's height had over 100 members. It started as he began to attract groups of young girls, with troubled, emotional lives, rebelling against their parents and society. His followers were easy to lead and Manson was like a magnet for the lost and desperate, LSD (acid) and amphetamines were additional tools by which he altered their personalities to his needs, he battered down their inhibitions and questioned their validity of their notions of good and evil, he brainwashed his followers through the use of a mixture of scientology techniques including eye contact, impossible commands, threatened expulsion from the group, cultivated loathing for the outside world and death threats to anyone who dared to try and leave him or betray him and as the family guru, Manson claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, he was referred to as both 'God' and 'Satan'. They survived with a combination of stealing and scavenging, much of their food was taken from what supermarkets discarded at the end of the day. Manson would hand out grass (cannabis) or LSD, always taking slightly less than his followers and then dictate who would do what with whom, over and over he would repeat one of his favourite phrases, "No sense makes sense", it was a philosophy that would eventually lead some of them to commit murder without question when he ordered them to. The females were all "Charlie's girls", he had sexual intercourse with them all, he believed women's only function was to service men, he often told them, "You people do not belong to me, you belong to yourself", he ran the family as though it were a pack, people who showed fear were punished, those, however, who could out-stare, out-threaten or show they were not frightened were left alone. That spring they left San Francisco in an old school bus and travelled around, they finally settled in a house in Los Angeles' Topanga Canyon, but the building was too small for the growing family and Susan Atkins, one of Manson's girls, secured the use of a place called Spahn's Movie Ranch which was situated in the mountains north of Los Angeles.
Manson met Dennis Wilson, the drummer of The Beach Boys, while visiting a friend in San Francisco. Manson and Wilson became close, he let Charlie and his family stay at his mansion, drive his cars and take his clothes, he also spent thousands of dollars having the family's teeth fixed. The family were a permanent fixture at Dennis' home until too many freaky people started to turn up, Dennis asked Manson to leave, but they remained good friends, in fact Dennis thought Charlie was very talented and bought one of his songs. It was through Dennis that Manson met Terry Melcher, a record producer and son of actress Doris Day. Melcher lived at the Cielo Drive house later to be rented to Sharon and Roman. Some believe the reason why Manson sent Tex and the girls there was to get money from Melcher that he was due for a drug deal or that he was angry with Melcher for turning him down for a record contract as Charlie was quite a talented song-writer and singer, this is only a few of the theories of why they were there that night, at the end of the day the only ones that really know are the ones that committed the crimes and can you really believe their word?
By 1968, Charlie was forecasting a racial war when all of a sudden The Beatles released their White Album which included the song titled 'Helter Skelter' which in Charlie's eyes reinforced everything he was thinking about the racial war, he decided to call this war helter skelter. Charlie says "this would start with the black man going into white people's homes and ripping off the white people, physically destroying them". Another theory why the Tate murders were committed was to start this race war which he did not see coming, when Susan Atkins wrote 'pig' on the door it was a term used by the blacks to mean the establishment, it was not a term at the time used as a name for the police. The family believed Manson was the 'fifth angel', the other four angels being the members of The Beatles group. Manson had already forecast that the murders would start in the summer of 1969, how could Manson assume complete control over of a large number of devoted, mainly female, followers and get them to perform these hideous crimes that frightened all of Hollywood and appalled the world? The family were only caught for the murders because of Susan Atkins boasting to her cell mate, Virginia Graham, while she was in custody for questioning on the murder of Gary Hinman that she and other members of the family were involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders and had a hit list that included Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Jones and Richard Burton to name but a few.