The a to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (35 page)

The illegitimate son of a dissolute mother who reportedly once tried to swap him for a pitcher of beer, Manson endured a nightmarish childhood of abandonment and abuse. His adolescence was essentially a continuous cycle of petty crime, arrest, incarceration, and escape. (“Truth is,” Manson once said in a rare moment of insight, “I ain’t never been anything but a half-assed thief who didn’t know how to steal without getting caught.”) At eighteen, he sodomized a fellow inmate at knifepoint, a deed that earned him a stint in a federal reformatory. Paroled in 1954, he spent the next dozen years in and out of various prisons for crimes ranging from check forgery to pimping. By the time he was released in 1967—against his own objections—the thirty-three-year-old Manson had spent the bulk of his life behind bars.

He emerged during the heady days of the so-called Summer of Love, when the counterculture was at its euphoric peak. In San Francisco’s
Haight-Ashbury district—the hotbed of hippiedom—Manson discovered psychedelic drugs, free love, and Aquarian Age occultism. Before long, his sinister charisma had attracted a “family” of drifters and dropouts.

Living with his followers on a dusty ranch outside LA, Manson developed a bizarre apocalyptic theory, partly inspired by—of all things—the Beatles’
White Album,
one of the most benign and whimsical rock and roll albums ever recorded. In particular, he interpreted the song “Helter Skelter” (which referred to an amusement-park kiddie ride) as a prophecy about an impending race war, during which blacks would rise up and exterminate all white people, except for Manson and his chosen few, who would eventually rule the world. To instigate the war, Manson sent his followers on a deranged mission, ordering them to slay some prominent white people in a way that would implicate black revolutionaries. On the night of August 9, 1969, five of Manson’s “family” members broke into the home of film director Roman Polanski and savagely butchered his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, along with four other people. Before leaving, they used the victims’ blood to scrawl incendiary graffiti on the walls. The following night, Manson himself led a party of his “creepy crawlers” to the home of a couple named LaBianca, who were similarly slaughtered and mutilated.

The killings set off a panic in Los Angeles and sent shock waves throughout the nation. Ultimately, Manson was arrested when one of his female followers—in jail on an unrelated charge—boasted of the murders to a cell mate.

Manson turned his 1970 trial into a circus (see
Courtroom Theatrics
), but the jury was not amused. He and four of his followers were slated for the gas chamber, but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1972, when the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty.

“Wow, what a trip!”

Manson “family” member Susan Atkins, after licking Sharon Tate’s blood off her hands

M
ARRIAGE

That some of the most notorious serial killers in history have been husbands and fathers is a striking testament to the grotesquely divided personalities of these psychopaths—their ability to lead outwardly “normal” lives while secretly engaged in the most depraved activities imaginable. The roster of homicidal family men includes Albert
Fish
, John Wayne
Gacy
, Albert
DeSalvo
, and Andrei
Chikatilo
. It comes as no surprise to learn that their marriages weren’t exactly made in heaven.

Though DeSalvo’s wife never divorced him, his unslakable sex drive (reputedly, he insisted on lovemaking as often as six times a day) turned her life into an unremitting ordeal. Other women haven’t displayed Mrs. DeSalvo’s tolerance. After being driven to distraction by his incessant sexual demands, Earle Leonard
Nelson
’s sixty-year-old wife finally kicked him out of the house (at which point he began venting his libido by raping and strangling elderly landladies from coast to coast).

Three wives abandoned Angelo Buono—one of the
“
Hillside Stranglers
”
—in rapid succession because of his brutal sex habits (one wife alleged that Buono sodomized her in front of the children). After putting up with his “peculiarities” for almost twenty years—such as his tendency to stroll around the house naked while screaming, “I am Christ!”—Fish’s first wife, Anna, finally ran off with a young lover. Fish proceeded to woo and wed a string of desperate widows, each of whom dumped him the moment she discovered his fondness for such nuptial pastimes as flagellation and coprophagy.

Gacy’s first wife filed for divorce on the day he was sentenced to prison on sodomy charges. His second marriage likewise fell apart after it became clear that Gacy’s preferred form of sex involved young male pickups. His wife had no idea, of course, that the crawl space beneath their suburban home contained the corpses of several dozen of these victims. She herself escaped unscathed. The wife of British sex slayer John Reginald Christie wasn’t as lucky. She ended up as one of his victims, her body stashed beneath the dining room floorboards of their London flat (see
Homebodies
).

By contrast, some serial killers actually manage to remain contentedly married to women who never suspect that their husbands are anything other than ordinary, if slightly eccentric, individuals. This was true of Peter
Kürten
, one of the most appalling lust murderers of the twentieth century, whose devoted wife had no inkling that her husband was the infamous “Monster of Düsseldorf.”

Even more unbelievable are those cases in which the wives are not only aware of their husbands’ depravities but also actively participate in them. Gerald Gallego’s seventh wife, Charlene, helped lure young female victims into his clutches by promising them free marijuana. And the British sex slayer Rosemary West allegedly helped her husband, Fred, torture and murder ten people—including their own sixteen-year-old daughter (see
Killer Couples
).

M
ASK OF
S
ANITY

The Mask of Sanity
is the title of a classic 1976 study of the psychopathic personality by psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley. The phrase itself refers to the psychopath’s most chilling characteristic: his ability to appear perfectly ordinary, to conceal his cold-blooded nature beneath a normal facade.

Not all psychopaths are criminals. Some are highly successful people. After all, they are masters of manipulation. They can make you believe that they are the most caring, sensitive, charming people in the world. But it’s all a show. Under the surface, they’re hollow to the core—complete egocentrics who care about nothing except their own greedy desires.

The serial killer is the most frightening of all psychopaths. The most basic human emotions—empathy, conscience, remorse—are completely missing from his emotional makeup. Behind his “mask of sanity,” he is utterly evil. And yet, he’s so good at dissembling that it’s almost impossible to see his true, monstrous face.

Not, at any rate, until it’s too late.

For more on this phenomenon, see
Jekyll/Hyde
.

Psychopathic Checklist

Is someone you know—a neighbor, relative, or possibly your spouse—a criminal psychopath? Are you one yourself? Dr. Robert Hare—a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and author of
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
(1999)—has devised a twenty-item checklist identifying the main characteristics of the psychopathic personality. See how many you or your loved ones possess!

1.
Glib and superficial charm
—the tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. A psychopath never gets tongue-tied.

2.
Grandiose self-worth
—a grossly inflated view of one’s abilities and self-worth. Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings.

3.
Need for stimulation or proneness to boredom
—an excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulation; taking chances and doing things that are risky.

4.
Pathological lying
—can be moderate or high.

5.
Conning and manipulativeness
—the use of deceit and deception to con, cheat, or defraud others for personal gain.

6.
Lack of remorse or guilt
—a lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims.

7.
Shallow affect
—emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings.

8.
Callousness and lack of empathy
—a lack of feeling toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless.

9.
Parasitic lifestyle
—an intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others.

10.
Poor behavioral controls
—expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse.

11.
Promiscuous sexual behavior
—a variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners.

12.
Early behavioral problems
—a variety of behaviors prior to age thirteen, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, sexual activity, fire-setting, glue-sniffing, alcohol use, and running away from home.

13.
Lack of realistic long-term goals
—an inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals.

14.
Impulsivity
—the occurrence of behaviors that are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation.

15.
Irresponsibility
—repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments.

16.
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
—as reflected in low conscientiousness, an absence of dutifulness, denial of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial.

17.
Many short-term marital relationships
—a lack of commitment to a long-term relationship.

18.
Juvenile delinquency—
behavior problems between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.

19.
Revocation of conditional release
—a revocation of probation or other conditional releases due to technical violations.

20.
Criminal versatility
—a diversity of types of criminal offenses; taking great pride in getting away with crimes.