The bizarre legal battle for the corpse of Charles Manson

Like everything to do with Charles Manson, there probably wasn’t a real reason that he called his followers his “family”; he just made a bunch of shit up, and people bought it, hook, line and sinker.

That’s the open secret at the heart of the whole Manson story. That’s when you really look into what caused a number of otherwise bright young people to murder five people. There’s nothing there. Manson was nothing but bluster and, apparently, an oral sex technique that might legitimately have been given to him by God. No matter how many people swore their lives to his supposed “teachings“, there was quite simply nothing there and never was.

To many, this would make the fact that he’s literally deified by some people incredibly confusing, but honestly, that’s the whole point of cult psychology. Cults are built on the sunk cost fallacy. Lost, confused people in need of saving gravitate towards people who didn’t just make them feel safe and loved, but also give them a purpose, something to believe in. That’s an intoxicating promise that all of us, to a soul, are capable of falling for.

For most people who fall for it, it leads to a vicious cycle of believing in this person, being let down by them, feeling like it’s their fault and thus, believing in them harder. Stepping away from this person doesn’t just mean stepping away from their support network (one who will absolutely play the “after all I’ve done for you” card on them as well), it means admitting they’ve been wrong. That’s a hard thing to admit, especially when you’ve done the kind of things the Manson family did.

It’s the reason why when he finally kicked the bucket in 2017, so many people were desperate to take care of his body.

What happened after the death of Charles Manson?

The death of Charlie Manson kicked off a baffling series of events.

At their core, the issue was that many different parties wanted to take custody of his corpse. That’s the wonderful thing about spouting a bunch of bollocks with complete confidence in yourself, after all, the people who listen make their own minds up about what’s actually being said. The problems come when people start interpreting what you say differently, but no one will ever actually blame the person saying it for that, just fight amongst each other.

As was the case here. The core trio of people battling for Manson’s body were his grandson, Jason Freeman (a horribly ironic surname for a descendant of Charlie Manson if there ever was one), Michael Brunner, who claimed to be his son and Michael Channels, who was a friend of Manson’s while he was in prison and owns a huge collection of Manson memorabilia. The spat descended into a court case so long that the body they were trying to gain custody of literally rotted.

It’s true. In a fantastic turn of events, the coroner’s office charged with taking care of the body of Charles Manson just didn’t bother looking after it. It’s nothing more than a Nazi cult leader cunt like him deserves, and when Freeman eventually won the legal battle for his grandfather’s remains, he told the press that he’d taken one look at the body and said they “had a mess on their hands”.

Despite that, they had an open casket funeral for him (can you imagine the smell?), before cremating him and scattering his ashes on a California hillside.

He may have been cremated, but he at least got to rot a little beforehand. Good.