By Britta DeVore
| Published
In history, there are few cult leaders who have been as talked-about as Charles Manson. The orchestrator behind the brutal killing of actress Sharon Tate and her friends, as well as a married couple living in Los Angeles, has long been a household name. Next month, Peacock will be telling his story in a brand-new docuseries titled Making Manson.
Charles Manson Speaks
A recently released teaser gives potential audiences a first-look into the production, revealing the pieces of Charles Manson’s life that will mold Making Manson. The project promises audiences that they’ll have the first look at more than two decades worth of never-before-reported conversations that the convict had from behind prison bars. When it comes to the leader of the cult known as The Family, there’s a lot to dig into, from his early days to the crimes that put him in the public eye.
Throughout Making Manson, audiences will be transported back to Charles Manson’s youth, his more than complicated relationship with his mother and his stints in and out of reform school and prison. The docuseries will follow him to San Francisco where he first started The Family and managed to make a group of lost young adults feel seen enough to persuade them to commit heinous murders for him.
The Manson Murders
We can expect a very large chunk of Making Manson to focus on said heinous murders, as the violence carried out against Sharon Tate and a group of her friends on the evening of August 8, 1969, is what would make headlines around the world. Although Charles Manson wasn’t in attendance, it was through his belief system and control that a group of followers, including Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Linda Kasabian, and Susan Atkins, drove to Tate’s rental home where she was staying with her husband and Rosemary’s Baby director, Roman Polanski (the filmmaker was overseas at the time of the killings). There, the four Family members tortured and killed Tate (who was pregnant at the time of the murders), Jay Sebring, Abigail Folder, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent.
The slayings were part of Charles Manson’s plan, “Helter Skelter,” through which he was hoping to start a race war. Along with the Tate killings, the Making Manson docuseries will undoubtedly also cover the next night of Helter Skelter when the same group from the evening before, plus Leslie Van Houten, Clem Grogan, and Charles Manson himself, cruised to Los Feliz and broke into the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. There, they (minus Manson) killed the married couple, writing the misspelled “Healter Skelter” on their refrigerator as a tip to investigators.
The Madness Of Manson
Despite their sloppy work, the Family members involved in the two nights of chaos wouldn’t be caught for months, with an absolutely insane trial to follow. As it would turn out, the killings were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the insanity of Charles Manson, and he wasn’t afraid to show it in the courtroom or long after his sentencing was handed down. Peacock’s Making Manson will be a must-watch for anyone who calls themselves a true-crime fan, with so many folks related to the case stepping forward to tell their side of the story and their experience with the cult leader.
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