Sharon Tate was eight months pregnant when she got killed. She looked at her killers and said “I want to have my baby.” They stabbed her sixteen times after this words. Then they wrote “PIG” on the front door in her blood and went home to sleep. In the summer of 1969, Charles Manson was a 34-year-old ex-convict living on a ranch outside Los Angeles with a group of followers he called “the Family.” He had spent more than half his life in prison. When he got out, he learned to play guitar, wrote songs, and believed he was going to be a rock star. He met Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. He got an introduction to Terry Melcher, a producer at Columbia Records. Melcher passed on the music. Manson didn’t forget the address. On the night of August 8, four of his followers drove to 10050 Cielo Drive — Melcher’s old house, now rented by actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski. They killed everyone inside. Tate. Three of her friends. A teenager who was visiting. The next night, on Manson’s orders, they killed again — a grocery store owner named Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary. They wrote “PIG” on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood. At the LaBianca house, they misspelled “HEALTER SKELTER” on the refrigerator. Manson believed a race war was coming and named it after a Beatles song. In the video below, Manson sits down for a television interview and does what he always does — he performs. He denies everything and reframes everything. He says “there’s no murder in the holy war.” He calls himself a nobody — “a tramp, a bum, a hobo” — and then in the next breath declares himself the lawmaker. He shifts between a whisper and a shout. He locks eyes with the interviewer like he’s daring them to look away. There is no remorse. There is no reflection. There is a man who has been doing this exact routine for almost two decades behind bars and has gotten better at it every year. Manson never personally killed anyone during the Tate-LaBianca murders. He was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy. He was sentenced to death, but California abolished the death penalty the following year and his sentence became life. He was denied parole twelve times. He never once accepted responsibility. He died in prison on November 19, 2017. He was 83 years old. Did he actually believe in Helter Skelter, or was it just the story he told to make lost kids kill for him?