The murders spanned two nights, and a number of the victims, including the actress Sharon Tate, were mutilated. The race war Manson dreamed of never came to pass, but he achieved a kind of pop culture infamy through his antics during a well-publicized trial and subsequent books and television movies that tried to make sense of the carnage. Manson became, in the eyes of journalists, politicians and, eventually historians, an unfortunate metaphor for the decade's political excesses. The biggest purveyor of violence during the 1960s, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded the nation during his Riverside Church speech 2½ years before the Manson murders, proved to be the United States government.

Source: CNN November 21, 2017 00:40 UTC