MARSHALL COUNTY, W.Va. (WTRF) — One small Marshall County town served as one of the childhood homes of the man who is perhaps the 20th century’s most infamous serial killers, Charles Manson.
Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on Nov. 12, 1934. His mother was a 16-year-old runaway girl named Kathleen Maddox and his father, whom he likely never met, was Colonel Walker Henderson Scott Sr., an Army man stationed in the area, according to charlesmanson.com
Manson’s father left the area when Kathleen told him she was pregnant, and the baby was first named “no name Maddox” by the hospital then changed to Charles Milles Maddox. He later took the surname Manson from a man his mother was later involved with.
Kathleen was an alcoholic and was unable or perhaps unwilling to care for her young son, who was often left to take care of himself, according to charlesmanson.com.
Kathleen was sentenced to ten years in prison for robbery in 1939. Charles was then sent to live with his relatives in McMechen in Marshall County, West Virginia.
After his mother was paroled in 1942, the two were reunited. Charles became a juvenile delinquent and was arrested. Kathleen sent him to a reform school in Indiana which was just the first of a string of schools he was placed in by authorities. It was all to no avail, and he spiraled further into criminality, reportedly committing rapes, robberies and thefts.
By the time he was 20, he had served most of his childhood incarcerated. He was released from a maximum security facility in Ohio and turned over to his aunt and uncle.
The house he lived in still stands on what is now Caldwell Street, according to The Observer-Reporter. Manson’s relatives eventually moved to Charleston and his aunt later sold the house. The Mamula family most recently lived there and told The Observer-Reporter that tourists often drove by to see where the famous serial killer lived. The Mamulas said they unfortunately did not find any of Charlie’s belongings in the house and they had even searched the basement.
Travel bloggers McAndrew Travels posted their tour of the home on YouTube.
Manson tried to return to West Virginia years after his murder convictions in Los Angeles. In 1983, he submitted a request to prison officials for a transfer to the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville to be closer to his family, according to The Observer-Reporter.
Manson was sentenced to death in California in 1971 for his orchestration of multiple grisly crimes, the Tate-LaBianca murders, carried out by his cult, The Family. California abolished the capital punishment in 1972 and his sentence was commuted to life in prison, according to Britannica. He died in prison in 2017.
His cult members murdered five people including actress Sharon Tate, who was 8 months pregnant, at her estate in the Hollywood Hills on the night of August 8-9, 1969. Tate was married to director Roman Polanski.
Two days later, cult members murdered Leno LaBianca, a supermarket executive, and his wife in their home. The killers carved words into their victims’ bodies and used their blood to scrawl messages across the wall, including one that read, ‘Healter Skelter,’ which was misspelled, and came from a Beatles song.
This unsettling tale is documented in “Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murderers,” written by the prosecutor who tried the cases.
Who could have imagined a story so evil could have been spawned in a small, tranquil West Virginia town?
