Strange Saga Of Manson's Corpse Comes To An End

LOS ANGELES, CA — A Kern County Superior Court commissioner ruled Monday that a grandson of Charles Manson has the right to the mass murderer's remains.

Jason Freeman competed with former Manson pen pal Michael Channels and Michael Brunner, who said Manson is his father, for control of the remains.

Freeman said outside court in January he wants to have Manson's body cremated.

Freeman maintained Manson died without a will and that any such document anyone claims to possess is a forgery. He said Channels had used his contacts with Manson to generate memorabilia to pay his mortgage while also denigrating the killer in conversations with others.

Channels said Manson's 2002 will, filed in Kern County in November, names him the executor of Manson's estate and gives him control of what to do with the convicted killer's remains.

Manson, who spent nearly 50 years behind bars and was denied parole a dozen times, died Nov. 19 at age 83 at Bakersfield Mercy Hospital of heart failure triggered by colon cancer that had spread to other areas of his body.

Manson and members of his outcast "family" of followers were convicted of killing actress Sharon Tate -- who was eight months pregnant -- and six other people during a bloody rampage in the Los Angeles area in August 1969. Prosecutors said he and his followers were trying to incite a race war he dubbed "Helter Skelter," taken from the Beatles song of the same name.

The Manson clan also stabbed to death grocery magnate Leno La Bianca and his wife Rosemary La Bianca the night after the Tate murders.

Manson was convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Tate, the La Biancas and four other people at the Tate residence -- coffee heiress Abigail Ann Folger, photographer Wojciech Frykowski, hairdresser Jay Sebring and Steven Earl Parent, who was shot and killed in his car on his way to visit an acquaintance who lived in a separate rented guest house on the Tate property.

Manson and followers Charles "Tex" Watson, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and the late Susan Atkins all were convicted and sentenced to state prisons in 1971. Manson also was convicted in December of that year of first-degree murder for the July 25, 1969, death of Gary Hinman and the August 1969 death of Donald Shea.

Manson and the others originally were sentenced to death, but a 1972 state Supreme Court decision caused all capital sentences in California to be commuted to life in prison. There was no life-without-parole sentence at the time.

City News Service; Photo: MARCH 18: In this handout photo from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Charles Manson, 74, poses for a photo on March 18, 2009 at Corcoran State Prison, California. (Photo by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via Getty Images)