Charles Manson Dead at 83

[Darth Yan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/obit ... -dead.html

Honestly good riddance. At the same time many of his crew are still alive and up for parole (in particular Tex Watkins, who was his right hand man in the killings.) The case isn't done yet (Watkins SEEMS to have genuinely repented for his crimes but Sharon Tate's family isn't necessarily forgiving).

[Aleister Crowley]

Charles Manson was a fascinating person, even if you take into account what he is said to have done. I find it really weird. What I find even weirder is how for such a clear cut case of murder, it was not treated as such. In the trial, it was for the most part dominated by the prosecution. This is not the norm for a trial at all, even one where the outcome is sort of clear. The United States has a principal that one is innocent before one is found guilty. In many ways this was not held to with Manson and his "cult" of women. They were mostly considered guilty from the start. Also, no defense was allowed on the part of the defense lawyers. They did not allow Manson to call witnesses or provide evidence to counter the prosecution's. Also the lead prosecutor violated several ethical guidelines which are set for lawyer's conduct.

My main stance is that justice did not occur in that courtroom and what we saw in later re-enactments was a farce. In no way do I approve of murder, but I do believe in some cases there are reasons to doubt. This is one of those cases.

[Darth Yan]

If Manson didn't who did? Tex Watson has admitted his guilt numerous times, as have the other women In the Kevin Cooper case there's reason to believe Cooper was framed since evidence was checked out off the books and the shirt that had Cooper's blood was a.) a shirt he'd have no access to and b.) could EASILY have been accessed and tampered with (all the district attorney's office and sheriff's department would have had to do was bribe a clerk in san diego which let's face it isn't that hard.)

Cooper has reason to argue he was framed; he most likely was. Manson was guilty as fuck.

Edit: As an aside I'm conflicted about some of the crew members. Some seem to have truly turned over a new leaf but they still denied numerous people the right to live

[Aleister Crowley]

If Manson didn't who did? Tex Watson has admitted his guilt numerous times, as have the other women In the Kevin Cooper case there's reason to believe Cooper was framed since evidence was checked out off the books and the shirt that had Cooper's blood was a.) a shirt he'd have no access to and b.) could EASILY have been accessed and tampered with (all the district attorney's office and sheriff's department would have had to do was bribe a clerk in san diego which let's face it isn't that hard.)

Cooper has reason to argue he was framed; he most likely was. Manson was guilty as fuck.

Edit: As an aside I'm conflicted about some of the crew members. Some seem to have truly turned over a new leaf but they still denied numerous people the right to live

To start off, I don't 100% endorse what I'm about to say. I just think it has a slight ring of truth. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist.

It is possible that the Tate murder was faked. The crime scene photos look like movie sets and hastily set up. If they were movie sets then it would make sense given the era this took place in. CSI technology wasn't what it is today and a lot of the tools of the deception trade were not avaliable back then. Plus, actual photos taken of the house show a different setting than what we see in the "crime scene photos". Of particular note are the autopsy photos, which have irregularities and artifacts which are abnormal. I can PM you a huge collection of them, but many of them are still grisly images. Keep in mind that Polanski did movies, as did Sharon. She was familiar with how to act "dead" and might have done so. A lot of the post-mortem photos look very much alive. As for the people in Manson's crew, they are most likely given a script to go by, so their confessions would have to be read to verify them. I hope I'm not making you angry, but I just find this case personally interesting. Manson might have been involved with members of the Agape Lodge of O.T.O and that kind of makes him noteworthy to me. He was the perfect fall guy in many respects. He had no desire to be free.

Edit: I believe the Gary Hinman murders and the others were real, but done by copycat killers. It isn't too far out of the question for people to do this, especially when facts from the case are not kept confidential.

[Broomstick]

Frankly, I think the above is bullshit.

For one thing, an on-going controversy is that Manson did not, himself, with his own hands, actually kill anyone. He went to jail for supposedly ordering his followers to kill, picking targets, and so forth, not for him actually doing the deed. Which makes little difference in the end because orchestrating multiple murders is just as bad as being an actual murderer in most ways that are meaningful.

Second, just how the hell do you think crime scenes are "supposed" to look? Are you any sort of forensic investigator? Do you have any education, or just plain experience (perhaps a clean-up crew stint) with actual crime scenes?

Shows like CSI are only distorted reflections of real life.

I've seen actual dead people. Some of them - like the guy disassembled by impact with a train - were very, very dead. The corpsicle I found on a Chicago sidewalk one winter was very clearly deceased, but the one I found in the stairwell of a train station.... not so obvious, at first he just looked asleep. When I worked at a clinic everyone thought Mr. W had been having a very nice nap for a couple hours, including the lady sitting next to him - nope, dead. Someone dead of something like carbon monoxide poisoning actually has very vivid coloring, not the corpse-grey you might be thinking of. The point being is that dead people don't always look that dead from the standpoint of how people expect a corpse to look.

The point being, doing internet research is not going to make you an expert in crime scenes or dead people.

Then there's the motivation - what's the point of framing this guy and his buddies? Who benefits? Where's the gain for all that effort?

And for Og's sake do NOT send me any autopsy photos, please.

[Lonestar]

Manson would have been a great person to listen to at a bus stop if all his stories didn't end in murder.

[Elfdart]

Charles Manson was a fascinating person, even if you take into account what he is said to have done. I find it really weird. What I find even weirder is how for such a clear cut case of murder, it was not treated as such. In the trial, it was for the most part dominated by the prosecution. This is not the norm for a trial at all, even one where the outcome is sort of clear. The United States has a principal that one is innocent before one is found guilty. In many ways this was not held to with Manson and his "cult" of women. They were mostly considered guilty from the start. Also, no defense was allowed on the part of the defense lawyers. They did not allow Manson to call witnesses or provide evidence to counter the prosecution's. Also the lead prosecutor violated several ethical guidelines which are set for lawyer's conduct.

My main stance is that justice did not occur in that courtroom and what we saw in later re-enactments was a farce. In no way do I approve of murder, but I do believe in some cases there are reasons to doubt. This is one of those cases.

Bitch, stop lying.

To start off, I don't 100% endorse what I'm about to say.

Then why the fuck are you saying it?

I just think it has a slight ring of truth. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist.

It is possible that the Tate murder was faked. The crime scene photos look like movie sets and hastily set up. If they were movie sets then it would make sense given the era this took place in. CSI technology wasn't what it is today and a lot of the tools of the deception trade were not avaliable back then. Plus, actual photos taken of the house show a different setting than what we see in the "crime scene photos". Of particular note are the autopsy photos, which have irregularities and artifacts which are abnormal. I can PM you a huge collection of them, but many of them are still grisly images. Keep in mind that Polanski did movies, as did Sharon. She was familiar with how to act "dead" and might have done so. A lot of the post-mortem photos look very much alive. As for the people in Manson's crew, they are most likely given a script to go by, so their confessions would have to be read to verify them. I hope I'm not making you angry, but I just find this case personally interesting. Manson might have been involved with members of the Agape Lodge of O.T.O and that kind of makes him noteworthy to me. He was the perfect fall guy in many respects. He had no desire to be free.

Edit: I believe the Gary Hinman murders and the others were real, but done by copycat killers. It isn't too far out of the question for people to do this, especially when facts from the case are not kept confidential.

So Sharon Tate is alive and well?

Fuck off, troll.

[Ziggy Stardust]

To start off, I don't 100% endorse what I'm about to say. I just think it has a slight ring of truth. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist.

Even if you yourself don't realize it, you absolutely are a conspiracy theorist. Your post has all of the normal red flags. You vaguely allude to "irregularities" without actually stating what these are or why they are significant. You sneak in the phrase "most likely" when referring to Manson's crew reading scripts without presenting any evidence for WHY it is likely at all; this is a classic rhetorical trick of the conspiracy theorist. You also vaguely allude to "the Agape Lodge of O.T.O." (whatever the hell that is) as if it were damning. Once again, you don't provide any concrete evidence, you just engage in semantic hand-waving to make it seem like there are obvious issues with the record but without the specificity to allow anyone to dispute any one claim on its face. That is the EXACT M.O. of every two-bit conspiracy theorist out there.

(Further, just Googline "charles manson framed" leads me only to personal blogs that do the same thing you do, vaguely alluding to irregularities in the evidence without ever actually saying what they are. Again, this is classic conspiracy theory operating procedure).

Since I'm bored and curious, and if we haven't had a good non-Trump/Russia related debate on these boards in a while, I would love for you to try to present a compelling case for your theory. It's enough for you to link to pictures with a NSFW/graphic content warning for those not interesting in seeing them for themselves.

[Broomstick]

The Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a California branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis and the only one to continue past WWII. It was a mystical/metaphysical/occult organization whose most famous member is Aleister Crowly.

It's basically a claim that Manson was a ceremonial magician.

My take: a group that fancied themselves occult masters who got together on occasion for some group sex. Among other things. There have always been rumors of crimes and murders among them, but then, they've always had a lot of enemies willing to spread bad press about them.

Was Manson a member? I very much doubt it. The O.T.O. membership came largely from aristocrats or their American equivalent and they were by and large bigots. The bastard child of an unwed low-life mother is not the sort they'd invite to the party.

Basically, the claim is bullshit.

[Aleister Crowley]

To start off, I don't 100% endorse what I'm about to say. I just think it has a slight ring of truth. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist.

Even if you yourself don't realize it, you absolutely are a conspiracy theorist. Your post has all of the normal red flags. You vaguely allude to "irregularities" without actually stating what these are or why they are significant. You sneak in the phrase "most likely" when referring to Manson's crew reading scripts without presenting any evidence for WHY it is likely at all; this is a classic rhetorical trick of the conspiracy theorist. You also vaguely allude to "the Agape Lodge of O.T.O." (whatever the hell that is) as if it were damning. Once again, you don't provide any concrete evidence, you just engage in semantic hand-waving to make it seem like there are obvious issues with the record but without the specificity to allow anyone to dispute any one claim on its face. That is the EXACT M.O. of every two-bit conspiracy theorist out there.

(Further, just Googline "charles manson framed" leads me only to personal blogs that do the same thing you do, vaguely alluding to irregularities in the evidence without ever actually saying what they are. Again, this is classic conspiracy theory operating procedure).

Since I'm bored and curious, and if we haven't had a good non-Trump/Russia related debate on these boards in a while, I would love for you to try to present a compelling case for your theory. It's enough for you to link to pictures with a NSFW/graphic content warning for those not interesting in seeing them for themselves.

http://mileswmathis.com/tate.pdf (NSFW images, mostly crime scene and autopsy photos)

Here's my source. It has the photos in question, as well as other information that might help to explain some of what I wrote. As for the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, I did not mean to imply that it was a bad thing. The Ordo Templi Orientis is a former Masonic order that embraced the Law of Thelema. They are a major promulgation arm, so it would be strange of me to tar them. Manson may have had some connection to them, but he also did with Scientology and the Process Church of the Final Judgement. I'll leave that to you to decide about.

Basically, the claim is bullshit.

Now that I recall it, Ed Sanders edited his original book (The Family) to reflect the truth that Manson was in no way affiliated with the O.T.O. You're right about that. He was into Scientology though, which is known. Thank you for clearing that up. Everything else you said is true as well.

[Broomstick]

http://mileswmathis.com/tate.pdf (NSFW images, mostly crime scene and autopsy photos)

Alright, I looked.

For starters, no, most of the images are NOT "crime scene and autopsy photos", they're portraits and, for Sharon Tate and the like, publicity stills.

But let's start with Part 4, discussing the Tate/Polanski house. The writer has an assumption, I gather, that rich people all have over the top surroundings like Donald Trump's gilt residence. No, as a matter of fact, people can be rich without desiring fancy furnishings. Especially workaholics and those recently achieving success. Elvis Presley's mansion Graceland famously has some very tacky aspects. I was in the Chicago Playboy mansion in the early 1980's, it had cheap 1970's faux wood paneling, among other aspects the author would probably describe as "hillbilly". I've known some quite wealthy people in my life and some of them are content with very modest surroundings. Part 4 proves exactly jack and shit other than the author's own prejudices.

The changes in appearance in Polanski, that the author attributes to photo doctoring? His wife had just been fucking murdered - it fucks you up, stresses you out, and makes you look older. Grief does that. The "receding hairline"? He fucking combed his hair differently that morning.

The altered photos? Dude, this was 1969 - we didn't have photoshop. I mean, sure, you could alter photos back then but the results were rarely as clean as the photos he shows. It's like people claiming the Moon photographs were faked. It's bullshit.

Don MacLean's "American Pie" discussing the faking of this murder? What the fucking fuck? How the fuck is Don MacClean connected to this? WHY would he be connected to this?

Part 6 - the crime scene photos
First up, he has two photos of dead Sharon Tate side by side. He criticizes the one on the left, for having too much contrast and a bunch of other "defects", apparently NOT understanding the limitations of print media in 1969. The one on the right he criticizes as being not bloody enough. Excuse me, just how much blood do you need to qualify as a dead body? He also says her belly is not cut open, but in fact only the upper part of her abdomen is shown in that photo. Her womb - which was was reported to have been cut open - actually sits lower in her belly and if she had been cut low it wouldn't have shown in that photo AND most of the blood would have been out of the shot.

She doesn't even look dead. Her skin has color, she is smiling, and there is actually way too little
blood. This is many hours after the murders, we are told. The murders are said to have taken place around
midnight, and these photos were taken at least 10 to 12 hours later. She should look awful. She shouldn't have
any color, her mouth shouldn't look like that, and the chest wounds should simply be caked with blood. The
coroner's report claimed lividity on the left side of her head, but we see none here. What is lividity? Lividity
(also known as livor mortis) is bruising caused by blood pooling inside the body. It should be on the high side
here, but it isn't.

1) As I said, how a dead person looks can be deceptive
2) Her "smile" looks more like a "Glasgow grin" to me than an expression of amusement, she has either a spray of blood or an actual cut from the corner of her mouth to her left ear.
3) If she had already bled out by the time the chest wounds were made, if they were made after her heart stopped, no, they would not be "caked with blood" because they would have bled little with no pressure in the vessels. Do I know for a fact that's what happened? No - but it's one of the ways you can tell if a wound was made before or after death and it's a plausible mechanism for what we see.
4) Lividity happens on the LOW side of the body, not the high, because it's driven by gravity. That statement alone make me this this entire document is bullshit because you're basically saying blood falls UP.

He maintains that they never move a body at a crime scene. Bullshit. They take pictures as the scene is found, but they also turn bodies over looking for wounds and other evidence. This guy is NOT a crime scene investigator.

He bullshits about rigor mortis, giving time tables as hard and fast facts when there are actually multiple factors at work, and says she looks too "languid". Me? I see some start of bloating from decomposition in the second photo, and what might be a belly wound but, frankly, there's only so much information you can get from a photo like that. He bitches that in the second photo that Sebring's face is covered and that somehow "proves" it's not him - holy fuck, what does it fucking matter?

He bitches that she's got a bra on in the first photo and in the one from the coroner's table she doesn't and this somehow proves fakery. Holy shit, does he think death exams and autopsies are done on CLOTHED people? He bitches the face is more exposed than the rest of her body - yeah, dude, they censored her nipples because it's fairly common to do that in medical photos, even of dead people, as a form of courtesy to the deceased. Rational? Probably not entirely but the people involved with dead bodies usually do try to be at least somewhat respectful of the former human being. They don't give a fuck what conspiracy theorists 50 years later might think about it. He bitches about the angle of her neck - dude, dead people don't give a shit, you can put dead bodies in poses that would be agonizing for a living person because the living feel pain and the dead don't. They can also be disturbingly limp and floppy once rigor wear off which it might well have by the coroner's picture. There's also the problems in comparing a very high contrast black and white photo with a less contrasty color photo. His giving precise dimensions where there's no way in hell could be that exact on dimensions from the photos shown, which is why actual documentation like an autopsy report has measurements and dimensions taken directly from the body, not pictures. He bitches about the "R Wilson" "tag" - it's a fucking ruler, asshole, and it's probably owned by someone named "R. Wilson" and borrowed for the picture. There's a hole on one end, which a lot of long/large rulers have so you can hang them up when not in use.

I'm skipping the conspiracy theory about Thomas Noguchi and the FBI/CIA ordering up autopsy results.

Before we move on, I would like to point out that the death certificate is also fake. The way they normally do
this is simply by putting the wrong name in the box. We have seen them do that over and over. Perhaps the
most obvious was Jack London, where they put “Jack London” in the box despite the fact that his real name was
John Griffith Chaney.

That's not "fake", that's "incorrect". Incorrect information happens. My husband died in front of my eyes, I know he was dead, but they got two bits wrong on his death certificate, which I had amended even though it probably didn't matter to anyone but myself. It's not a big deal. That's why there's a simple and straight-forward means to correct these documents.

If a coroner is told "this is Jack London" he may or may not know Mr. London's legal name, but he has to type something in that box. It's one of the areas where mistakes get made. They're fixable.

With Sharon Tate, they faked it by putting Sharon Tate Polanski in the box, when—even
according to the mainstream story—her legal name at the time was Sharon Marie Polanski. Remember, your
maiden name doesn't become your middle name when you get married. In the 1960s, the normal procedure was
to replace the maiden name with the married name.

Maiden-name-becomes-middle-name is actually a known variant of the transition to a married name. Trust me, I've been married. I knew married people back in the late 1960's and early 1970's. People did things like that. Especially people from families like mine where people frequently didn't have middle names to begin with. This tells me the author is a man because men tend assume there are these hard, fast, unbreakable rules about these things when in fact there aren't and never have been, at least in the US. Again, this could have been a simple error in recording a name which happens all the fucking time and is easily and frequently amended later.

Another box is curious, and that is her alleged Social Security number. We are told it was 452-74-4733. Those last four digits throw up a red flag, since 1947 was year one of the CIA, and 33 is a favorite number of the CIA, used as a common signal. The two center numbers are also just the reverse of 47, 74 being the 47 flipped. I suggest this SS# is faked like the rest of it.

A nice trick of numerology. Know what numerology has in common with astrology? It's fucking bullshit. Know how many people in the US have "4733" as their last four numbers? No, I don't know either, but it's more than a few and it's like trying to read tea leaves to guess next week's lottery numbers. There is NO PROOF here that that isn't her real SS#.

Holy fuck, I'm up to page 50, I can't believe I've gotten this far through this cow pie, I must be really bored tonight. Page 50 we have another photo with the "R. Wilson" "tag" where it's obvious it's a goddamn fucking ruler with someone's name on the back of it. It's not a "tag", it's a fucking ruler. Probably the nearest to hand when someone needed to measure shit. What, you've never borrowed a co-worker's office supplies?

He makes a big deal out of photocontrast. You know what the "high contrast" photos look like to me? Photocopies. 1960's copy technology sucked compared to today's, I suspect some of the "photo" aren't photos but copies of photos. That he admits he pulled off the web so they are in no way original source documents.

He goes on and on about how wounds don't look right or are moved - apparently he doesn't understand that bodies are cleaned as part of death investigations and cleaned up wounds can look different. Knife wounds can gape. It's not unknown for the body part with a wound to be cut out of a body and stored for later review, which also alters appearances. These photos are not captioned, there no documentation as to when or what order the autopsy photos were taken.

There is no SSDI card in 1969 for Sharon Tate or Sharon Polanski!
According to the webmaster at Manson.freeforums, Sharon's SS# is 452-74-4733, so you can look it up yourself.

Big deal.

There wasn't one for me in 1969, either, though I'd been around for some time at that point. I didn't have a SS# until the early 1980's, I got it at the same time I got my passport to travel to Belgium and France. Unlike now, they weren't issued at birth. It was common not to get one until you really needed one, and people working under the table or for cash often didn't have one. It was not like it is now.

I'm not following that link because I've already spent too much time on this bullshit so I don't know what exactly the issue might be here. Supposedly she had an assigned number, but he thinks the number is faked, but acts shocked there is no card for a fake number... dude, chill out and try decaff.

Part 8 - he claims Manson is an actor who has never been in jail and is faking everything because he has a beard.

OK, that's it, I've had enough. It's been "fun" in the same way debunking 9/11 claims by asshats who known jackshit about aviation is "fun", but that's enough. This so-called document is a bullshit conspiracy theory, it's a work of fiction.

[Isolder74]

I wasn't going to say anything as Broomstick has already handled this perfectly well enough as it is.

Wow, I didn't realize you were using that source as your proof until I looked at it, an very questionable paper written filled with nothing but shear speculation and is a gold standard of cherry picking if I've ever seen one.

As far as I've seen of the Mansen case, he is worse then a average murdering psychopath. He has the the extra cowardice to not even get his own hands dirty but has others do his depravity for his. Gives his a crimes an extra layer of scariness to it when you really think about. We are just lucky he was stopped before his actions got even worse then it already was.

[Simon_Jester]

Thank you, Broomstick, for being willing to go through with that.

The numerology on the social security number is just cute. You can do some interesting numerology on my social security number too. And on a lot of people's numbers.

For starters, you can come up with special significance with just about any two-digit number by associating it with some 20th century event: the birthdate of one of the Rothschilds, or the founding of a government agency, or the date of a major event, or some dumb shit you made up.

I'm going to make it easy on my conspiracy theorist by dropping all the strings of the form 01, 02, 03... because ANY idiot can make up mystical significance for a single-digit number.

Even if you precommit to only having, say, five of the remaining 90 numbers between 10 and 99 be counted as having special mystical significance... well, consider the probability of at least one of those five numbers cropping up in a random string of nine digits (an SSN). Each pair of numbers has a 1/20 chance of being one of your magic numbers, and a 19/20 chance of not being one. There are eight pairs of numbers in an SSN (first and second, second and third, etc.).

The probability of none of the magic numbers appearing in a randomly generated SSN is (19/20)^8 , so there is a 33.7% chance that the SSN will contain one of the magic numbers. Not overwhelmingly likely, but definitely not un-likely.

If you're creative enough to think TEN of the possible ninety two-digit strings have significance... Say, if you're prepared to reverse a number and say 91 has the same conspiratorial significance as 19, and had five numbers to start with... Now the odds that a given SSN will have the magic numbers you're looking for are 57%, significantly more likely than not. At twenty magic numbers, 83.2%.

And it is not a strain on the creativity of the average person who spends time studying conspiracy history to think of twenty magic two-digit numbers.
Spoiler

12 is a magically symbolic number and is associated with a number of conspiracies that believe there are 'twelve' conspirators running things. 13, likewise. 15 corresponds to the Ides of March on which the prototypical conspiracy assassinated Caesar, the one that literally called themselves "the Conspiracy." 18, 19, and 20 are references to the respective centuries. Or to the years in which World War One ended, the Paris Peace Conference happened, and the League of Nations (the first international quasi-governing body) was founded.

21 is the founding of the Council on Foreign Relations. 23 is of mystical significance and the birth year of Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati. 25 is a perfect square- WOAH, although that works best if there's some other dumb pure-arithmetic shit you can pull like "hey, notice how the following four digits are all in ascending order")

32 is for 1832, the founding of the Skull and Bones society at Yale. 33 is a number of mystical significance, and also the date of Hitler's accession of power in Germany, the Reichstag fire (generally agreed to be probably a conspiracy at work). 36 is a perfect square. 39 is the start of World War II.

41 is the entry of the Soviets and Americans into the war, 42, 43, and 44 are all rich years for the founding of various US government organizations because a LOT of US government organizations were founded during World War II. 47 is a number of mystical significance AND, by sheer amazing coincidence happening two years after the greatest war in history, the year a lot of other shit happened.

I didn't even bother with numbers not between 11 and 50, and I'm on a roll. And I didn't even START on the kaballah.

[loomer]

You're doing an incredible disservice to your namesake, Aleister. Old Uncle Al would give you one fuck of a whuppin' and tell you to go learn how to actually be skeptical without swallowing lines of absolute horseshit.

[Aleister Crowley]

You're doing an incredible disservice to your namesake, Aleister. Old Uncle Al would give you one fuck of a whuppin' and tell you to go learn how to actually be skeptical without swallowing lines of absolute horseshit.

He didn't pull a single punch usually. I didn't say I believed 100% in what the author of the PDF was saying. It just seemed relevant to the discussion and I thought it would be an interesting read for some people. That someone did is a good thing in my book. Excellent job Broomstick. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

[mr friendly guy]

Manson gone.

Susan Atkins died in 2009 IIRC with a brain tumour and denied parole. Good riddance.

Patricia Krenwinkel is in jail and denied parole.

Leslie Van Houten in jail, recommended parole and awaiting the decision by the Californian governor.

Charles Watson, age 71 and still stuck in prison.

Two out of the five are gone. Just hurry up and die so we can put this shit behind us.

[Simon_Jester]

You're doing an incredible disservice to your namesake, Aleister. Old Uncle Al would give you one fuck of a whuppin' and tell you to go learn how to actually be skeptical without swallowing lines of absolute horseshit.

He didn't pull a single punch usually. I didn't say I believed 100% in what the author of the PDF was saying. It just seemed relevant to the discussion and I thought it would be an interesting read for some people. That someone did is a good thing in my book. Excellent job Broomstick. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

The thing is, it was such obvious horseshit that bringing it to the conversation was the equivalent of showing up at a potluck lunch with, y'know, actual horseshit. Anyone with minimal discernment and intelligence should be able to identify such things as being neither valuable nor desirable in a thinking conversation.

[Broomstick]

I didn't say I believed 100% in what the author of the PDF was saying.

You shouldn't believe any of it.

It just seemed relevant to the discussion and I thought it would be an interesting read for some people.

Fuck you and your conspiracy theory. That was a load of horseshit. I want that part of my life back.

[Lord Revan]

There's a saying "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof(or evidence)" now while technically valid it's not 100% complete what that saying means is that extraordinary claims (like "one of the most famous murderers in recent US history was a fake") demand evidence that's extraordinarily solid.

It doesn't mean that extraordinarily stupid evidence can be used to make extraordinary claims valid. Generally when you see a claim that would totally turn something that was previously thought to be clear cut on it's head it's best to be very skeptical about the claim as 99% of the time it's utter horseshit.

These murders happened when my parents (not me, my parents) were in their teens (16 and 15 to be exact), the idea that you could keep a fake murder where the "victim" never actually died from being revealed for a literal lifetime in the 20th century is a very extraordinary claim and the "evidence" and calling it that would being very generous being really flimsy to a point that anyone with a single properly working brain cell can point out the flaws in it doesn't really count as "extraordinarily solid" evidence.

[Aleister Crowley]

There's a saying "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof(or evidence)" now while technically valid it's not 100% complete what that saying means is that extraordinary claims (like "one of the most famous murderers in recent US history was a fake") demand evidence that's extraordinarily solid.

It doesn't mean that extraordinarily stupid evidence can be used to make extraordinary claims valid. Generally when you see a claim that would totally turn something that was previously thought to be clear cut on it's head it's best to be very skeptical about the claim as 99% of the time it's utter horseshit.

These murders happened when my parents (not me, my parents) were in their teens (16 and 15 to be exact), the idea that you could keep a fake murder where the "victim" never actually died from being revealed for a literal lifetime in the 20th century is a very extraordinary claim and the "evidence" and calling it that would being very generous being really flimsy to a point that anyone with a single properly working brain cell can point out the flaws in it doesn't really count as "extraordinarily solid" evidence.

Next time I'll look at something closer before I use it as evidence for a claim. Thanks for the advice.

You shouldn't believe any of it.

It just seemed relevant to the discussion and I thought it would be an interesting read for some people.

Fuck you and your conspiracy theory. That was a load of horseshit. I want that part of my life back.

Well hopefully I don't do that again. I mean that sincerely, because I wasn't trying to make you or anyone else angry. That was the last thing I would have wanted.

[Broomstick]

While it is laudable to keep an open mind one should not keep it so open one's brain falls out.

[Lord Revan]

While it is laudable to keep an open mind one should not keep it so open one's brain falls out.

indeed the worst way to have an "open mind" is to belive every alternative explanation or conspiracy theory because they're not "mainstream explantion".

best way to see if a theory holds any water is to look at it in a vacuum aka ask yourself if this theory would hold any water if it was the only explanation given, 99% of the time conspiracy theories don't add up if they don't have bias backing them up, since they're essentially that bias given form rather then a honest attempt at explaining this.

[Darth Yan]

I mentioned another criminal case; in that one there were records proving that the state's expert checked evidence out off the books and it physically changed shape and the shirt that had the guy's DNA actually would not have been accessible (the guy was an escaped con and the shirt wasn't at prisons; also none of the people in the house he hid out in recognized the shirt at all even though they recognized OTHER things he stole).

If there was a conspiracy it was mostly confined to the San Bernardino Sheriff's department DA's office and a clerk from San Diego's courthouse; someone in the state's lab may have turned a blind eye to corruption but that's a different issue while the defense's expert had a history of being pro law enforcement and was friends with the head of the state's lab and so may have had blindspots. Basically it was more "see no evil" rather than outright corruption (and compared to enron was much more minor in scale if it happened)

[Darth Yan]

Manson gone.

Susan Atkins died in 2009 IIRC with a brain tumour and denied parole. Good riddance.

Patricia Krenwinkel is in jail and denied parole.

Leslie Van Houten in jail, recommended parole and awaiting the decision by the Californian governor.

Charles Watson, age 71 and still stuck in prison.

Two out of the five are gone. Just hurry up and die so we can put this shit behind us.

Yeah. Tex Watson's been up for parole a few times and he seems to have developed some regrets for his actions; he didn't shy away from the fact that his crimes were awful and he's actually on good terms with his ex wife (usually those kinda marriages fall apart once the woman realizes the prisoner's a piece of shit.) I'm not sure how sincere it is but the daughter to he LaBianca's seems to believe it and has spoken out on his behalf (note; some people have accused her of aiding the crime because of this, or in the case of Doris Tate called her a "dumb shit". Whether she's right or not that seems a little unfair; she lost her family too so it's entirely up to her to decide whether to forgive.

On the other hand he WAS the ringleader during the actual killings (he wrote his own account of the murders and did NOT pull punches with what he did.)

[loomer]

While it is laudable to keep an open mind one should not keep it so open one's brain falls out.

Bingo. To me, it's especially galling to see someone parading around using Old Uncle Al's name while posting the kind of dreck he'd have dismissed as absolute rot. The grumpy old cunt had his flaws but reasonable intellectual rigour was one of his virtues.