Mass Murderers

My Friendship with Charles Manson

Oct. 28, 2010

Charles Manson

In 2004, Denise Noe wrote "The Manson Myth" for Crime Magazine, an article debunking the charismatic image of Charles Manson propagated by Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the best-selling true crime book of all time, Helter Skelter.  Noe wrote that the real life Charles Manson was not some messianic leader gone bad, but a pathetic figure from the beginning.  In 2008 she sent her article to Manson.  When he responded by calling her collect, an unusual relationship began.

by Denise Noe

I first read Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry when I was in high school. I was fascinated by its portrait of Charles Manson: a mesmerizing and charismatic criminal able to thoroughly dominate a band of fanatical followers. According to that book, Manson was able to convince his followers that a worldwide Armageddon between the black and white races was imminent. He believed that this race war had been prophesied in the Bible and in the Beatles’ White Album. Indeed, Manson supposedly thought the very title of the record was a reference to the coming black-white conflict. The helter-skelter theory was that blacks would kill off the white race – all except for Manson and his followers who would take refuge in a “Bottomless Pit” located in the desert.
 
According to the helter-skelter theory of which Manson had supposedly completely convinced his followers, Manson and his people would hide out until the race war was finished and blacks were the only ones above ground. Manson was a racist who believed that blacks would be unable to govern themselves and so would turn the reins of power over to him and the other Caucasians who would emerge from the Bottomless Pit. Thus, Charles Manson would become ruler of the world and his followers a class of aristocrats.

One Day in Oslo

Sept. 5, 2011

Anders Behring Breivik

During a 90-minute rampage at a youth camp not far from Oslo, 32-year-old Anders Breivik – an anti-Islamist – shot to death 69 people.  Earlier that afternoon he set off an ANFO bomb in the capital’s Government Quarter that killed eight people and injured hundreds of others.  When police arrived at the camp, the coward who had laughed as he gunned down defenseless children, dropped his weapons and raised his arms in surrender.

by Mark Pulham

All of the Nobel Prizes except one are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden.  The Peace Prize is reserved for Oslo, an honor that has made the capital of Norway a symbol of peace the world over since the award was first handed out in 1901.   

In the October, 2007, edition of the Readers Digest, an article appeared that listed the cities of the world that were the greenest and the most liveable. Coming in at number two, just behind Stockholm, was Oslo.

Surrounded by the blue Oslo fjord and the green hills and forests, the city is compact, easy to get around, with parks, even in the city center, never more than a block or two away.

Renowned for its efforts to promote world peace, Oslo would be the last place anyone would associate with terrorism.  In fact, in the 40 years between 1970 and 2010 there have been only 15 terrorist attacks in the entire country, leaving only 13 people injured, and just one person dead. Compare that figure to that of the United States, where, according to The National Consortium For The Study Of Terrorism And Responses To Terrorism (START) in the same 40 years, there has been almost 2,400 terrorist attacks. Almost 3,000 died in the 9/11 attacks alone.

Terror on the D.C. Beltway

Aug. 22, 2011

Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad

During a three-week reign of terror in October of 2002, the D.C. snipers gunned down 13 innocent people at random around the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Only three survived.

by Mark Pulham

Montgomery County, Maryland, is just north of Washington, D.C., one of the most affluent counties in the United States, and an ideal place to live. With an average homicide rate in the county of only 25 per year, Montgomery County was safe, and not the sort of place where a drive-by shooting would occur. Yet, in October, 2002, that was about to change.

It had been barely a year since the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and those who lived in and around Washington, D.C. were still nervous about future terrorist action.

On Wednesday, October 2, 2002, around 5:20 p.m., someone took a shot at a Michael’s Craft store in Aspen Hill, Maryland. The rifle bullet drilled a hole through the window, leaving minimal damage, but no one was hurt.

Just over an hour later, another shooting occurred, this time at the Glenmont Shopping Center at the junction of Randolph Road and Georgia Avenue. James Martin, a 55-year-old programs analyst for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was doing some grocery shopping at the Shoppers Food Warehouse, buying food for his church’s youth group, before he headed home to his wife and 11-year- old son.

The All-American Boy and the Birth of S.W.A.T.

July 26, 2011

Charles Whitman 

Charles Whitman’s killing rampage from the Tower at the University of Texas on August 1, 1966 led to the creation of S.W.A.T. teams in every major city across the United States.  During the 90-minute siege, the former Marine sharpshooter gunned down almost 50 innocent people – 17 of whom, including an 8-month old fetus, would die from their wounds. 

by Mark Pulham

Sniper Mark Essex

July 11, 2011

New Orleans Howard Johnson Hotel Jan. 7, 1973

Mark Essex’s killing rampage in downtown New Orleans on New Year’s Eve of 1972 represented a viral black rage in the age of “Black Power.”

by Denise Noe

 

New Year’s Eve 1972: The horror begins

 

Mark Essex

Filled with rage and racist hatred against whites, Mark James “Jimmy” Robert Essex had sworn revenge for both personal and historical wrongs. Residing in New Orleans at the time his determination to exact vengeance reached a boiling point, he chose New Year’s Eve 1972 as his moment.

On that day, Essex parked his car close to the New Orleans Police Department. He hid in a parking lot across from central lock-up. He aimed his Ruger .44 Magnum carbine and shot two men, both of them in the police force. Cadet Alfred Harrell, 19, died from his injuries. Lt. Horace Perez survived.

Ironically, in view of the racist purpose that Essex had stated in writing was the reason for his crimes, Harrell was black. Perhaps Essex viewed the young police cadet as a sell-out to the white system. It is also possible that this one murder was simply a mistake because Essex saw the blue uniform and failed to note the skin color.

If it was a mistake, Essex did not make another. All of the rest of his victims were people of fair skin, either white or, like Perez, Hispanic.

As police began to chase Essex, he set off diversionary firecrackers, jumped a chain link fence and raced across highway I-10.

The Manson Myth

December 12, 2004

Charles Manson

Thirty-five years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, it's time to demystify the would-be messiah that Vincent Bugliosi portrayed in the best-selling true-crime book of all time, Helter Skelter. The real Charles Manson was a semi-literate, petty criminal – car thief, check forger, pimp, drug dealer – so insecure about his ability to cope in the real world that on the day of the parole that plunged him into infamy he begged prison officials not to release him.

by Denise Noe

Charles Manson is the most famous common criminal in the world, his name a synonym for evil. Thirty-five years after the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders, he continues to be regarded as one of the most devilish cult figures in U.S. history, the possessor of a charisma and sexual magnetism so extraordinary that he ruled a "Family" of fanatically devoted followers willing to kill at his command. This is the Charles Manson that prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, popularized in the best-selling true-crime book of all time, Helter Skelter.

Manson was an unlikely candidate for the role of the would-be messiah that Bugliosi sold first to Manson's jury and then to a feckless national media enthralled by the cult-tinged horror of the Tate-LaBianca murders. At the time of the murders, Manson was a destitute parolee living a hand-to-mouth existence at Spahn Ranch, a place that had once served as a movie set for cowboy flicks and was then functioning as a dude ranch. He and 15 to 20 other drifters with whom he associated had been allowed to live on the premises by its 80-year-old owner, George Spahn, in exchange for helping out with chores like shoveling horse manure, and sexual favors freely provided by some of the young women. The group habitually ate food that its females cadged from dumpsters. A combination of panhandling, petty thievery, and drug dealing also helped them survive and support their primary pastimes: smoking marijuana and dropping acid, making music, and idly conversing.

Syndicate content