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Charles Manson: The killer's Ohio roots

The man convicted in 1971 of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people has connections to Northeast Ohio.

Mass murderer Charles Manson's story ended Sunday when he died of natural causes at the age of 83 in California.

But it began right here in Cincinnati.

Manson was convicted in 1971 of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people.

His cult followers, known as the Manson Family, were instructed by Manson in 1969 to commit five of the seven brutal murders which included actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant and married to film director Roman Polanski at the time.

The 83-year-old was serving out multiple life sentences at a prison in Corcoran, California, and was most recently denied parole a 12th time on April 11, 2012.

Manson was born in Cincinnati on Nov. 12, 1934 at Cincinnati General Hospital, now UC Medical Center.

But he never really lived here long enough to call it home, Enquirer and New York Times archives show.

According to a 1969 Enquirer article by Karen Heller, Manson was born with no name and no identified father. The name filed at City Hall read "no name Maddox;" his 18-year-old mother Kathleen Maddox was reportedly a prostitute from Ashland, Kentucky.

He was later named Charles Milles Manson after his mother married Cincinnati native William Manson, a 24-year-old dry cleaner who, according to the article, disappeared shortly after.

Kathleen was also absent for much of Manson's early life. She was imprisoned with her brother in 1939 for hustling men in bars and setting them up for her brother to beat and rob, according to a 1970 Enquirer article.

The young boy was sent to McMechen, W.V. in 1942 to live with extended family. He and his mother ended up in Indianapolis in 1945 after she was released.

His mother put him up for foster care, but a court stepped in and sent him to a series of boys' homes and reformatories.

In a New York Times article from 1970, one of Manson's friends from the homes recalled how charming the boy was at such a young age.

"Charlie had to be persuasive, it was the only way he could survive. Otherwise, he would have been dead long ago." said the unidentified friend.

Manson ran away from the boys' homes repeatedly and was placed in a series of penal institutions including the Federal Reformatory in Chilicothe. He was paroled in 1951 at the age of 21, followed by other brushes with the law.

Stealing cars, pimping, and forging government checksin the late 1950'slanded the Manson in federal prison in Washington state until 1967.

Manson then traveled to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of in San Francisco, gathering a devoted following of hippies who followed the manipulative man throughout southern California.

According to the article from the Enquirer in 1969, Cincinnati Police reportedly reached out to Californian authorities in that year wanting to know if Manson had been in the Cincinnati area around Oct. 22 when a Cincinnati patrolman, Martin Dumler, his wife and mother-in-law were found murdered in their Mt. Lookout home.

The Dumler case is unsolved to this day.

That about covers Charles Manson's time in the Greater Cincinnati area.

Everyone knows what happens next.

Manson was found guilty of orchestrating a massacre in which actress and fashion model Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered at Tate's home in Los Angeles.

According to the NY Times article from 1970, Manson and his followers were living nearby at the Spahn Ranch.

Terry Melcher was a record producer well known for working with the Beach Boys. Melcher apparently had promised Manson, an aspiring musician at the time, a recording contract, but he had backed out of the deal.

Furious, Manson dispatched his followers, chief among them Tex Watson, to target the house and kill everyone inside, believing it was still owned by Melcher.

The police had few leads at first, according to the Times. Before Manson and the Manson Family were suspected of the Tate murders and ultimately arrested, they murdered two other people, Leo and Rosemary LaBianca.

In 1971, Manson and the other four members of the Manson Family were sentenced to death for the seven murders, but all of their sentences were commuted to life in prison in 1972 after California abolished the death penalty.

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