Previously unheard audio tapes have revealed that a cult member's lawyer believed Charles Manson masterminded more murders than the seven he was linked to.
On the tapes attorney Billy Boyd, who represented Manson Family member Charles 'Tex' Watson, says he'd personally recorded around 20 hours of interviews with his client in 1969.
He goes on to say that during these interviews, Watson told him "about a bunch of other people Manson had killed", adding that his client never implicated himself in these additional killings.
The never before heard tape on which the revelation was made consists of an interview Mr Boyd conducted with an author some time before his death in 1999.
News website MyFoxLa.com obtained the tape and published its audio for the first time earlier this week.
Los Angeles police are reportedly keen to analyse the tapes in an attempt to potentially solve a raft of historic murders.
Watson is currently serving life in prison for the murders of Sharon Tate Polanski, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski on August 9 1969.
The murders were committed by members of a cult known as the Manson Family, led by the charismatic criminal and counterculture figure Charles Manson.
Manson believed the world was set to be engulfed in an apocalyptic race war between blacks and whites known as Helter Skelter.
The concept, he claimed, had been explained to him in code in The Beatles song of the same name, and he is alleged to have encouraged members of his cult to commit murders in order to set in motion events leading to the end of the world.
Manson was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, convicted through the joint responsibility rule and sentenced to death in 1971.
His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1972 and, despite multiple attempts at parole over the years, the 77-year-old remains locked up in California's Corcoran State Prison.
