Convicted mass murderer and cult leader Charles Manson dead at 83

1960s cult leader and convicted mass murderer Charles Manson died Sunday night at a Kern County hospital.

Death came to the 83-year-old Manson at 8:13 p.m., according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

On Thursday, it was reported that Manson was near death in a Bakersfield hospital, but the department of corrections was tight-lipped about further details citing federal and state medical privacy laws.

In January, Manson was taken to Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield for what authorities at the time would describe only as a serious medical problem.

Manson and members of his outcast “family” of followers were convicted of killing actress Sharon Tate — who was eight months pregnant — and six other people during a bloody rampage in the Los Angeles area in August 1969.

Prosecutors said Manson and his followers were trying to incite a race war he dubbed “Helter Skelter,” taken from the Beatles song of the same name.

The Manson clan also stabbed to death grocery magnate Leno La Bianca and his wife Rosemary La Bianca the night after the Tate murders.

Manson was convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Tate, the La Biancas, and four other people at the Tate residence — coffee heiress Abigail Ann Folger, photographer Wojciech Frykowski, hairdresser Jay Sebring and Steven Earl Parent, shot and killed in his car on his way to visit an acquaintance who lived in a separate apartment on the Tate property.

Manson and followers Charles “Tex” Watson, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins all were convicted and sentenced to state prisons in 1971. Manson was convicted in December of that year for first-degree murder for the July 25, 1969, death of Gary Hinman and the August 1969 death of Donald Shea.

He and the others originally were sentenced to death, but a 1972 Los Angeles Superior Court decision caused all capital sentences in California to be commuted to life in prison. There was no life-without-parole sentence at the time.