Manson has endured as face of evil for nearly 50 years

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

Other killers snuffed out far more lives than Charles Manson did in 1969. Yet he has endured for nearly a half century as the personification of evil, even in an age in which mass shootings leave dozens dead at a time.

Manson, the hippie cult leader who died Sunday at 83, horrified America a generation ago with the way he seemed to have turned young people murderously against everything their parents cherished.

That horror continued long after he had been locked up, in large part because of the demonic image crime experts say he cultivated with his bizarre behavior and searing, wild-eyed gaze.

“He had that maniacal look that was always so striking,” said James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston. “Manson was memorable: his voice, his appearance, his mannerisms, as well as his crimes and the crazy Charlie act he put on.”

Manson was convicted of orchestrating the slaughter of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six other people over two successive August nights in Los Angeles.

To his long rap sheet, historians might add this: accessory to the murder of the 1960s. The Manson family’s crimes, along with the deadly violence that erupted later in 1969 during a Rolling Stones concert at California’s Altamont Speedway, seemed to mark the demise of the hippie ideal of peace and love.