50 years ago, in August 1969, the optimism and hope of the 1960s came to a brutal and abrupt end with a series of horrific murders. At the center of the mayhem was Charles Manson, who for all intents and purposes looked very much like many aspiring musicians in California: long-haired, living in a hippy-commune, and irresistible to women. But Manson was suffering from severe mental issues, had a list of convictions as long as your arm, and hoped to bring about an apocalyptic race war. Read on for the bloody and sometimes tragic story of history’s most notorious cult leader…
40. Manson’s 16-year-old mother called him ‘No Name’ on his birth certificate
Charles Manson came into this world on November 12, 1934. His mother was a 16-year-old runaway, Kathleen Maddox, and his father was Colonel Walker Henderson Scott, an itinerant farm laborer. Having lied to the besotted teen that he was a colonel in the US Army (‘Colonel’, in fact, was his first name), Scott went away on ‘army business’ once he learned of the pregnancy. Poor Kathleen waited months before realizing he wasn’t coming back. Her family banished her to Cincinnati, Ohio, to give birth secretly, and out of despair, she wrote ‘No Name Maddox [sic]’ on her son’s birth certificate.
