Summary
Chaos: The Manson MurdersisNetflix’s latest true crime event, and it drops on August 02, 2025. The feature-length documentary is based on Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s book,CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.The documentary will feature interviews with people connected to one of the most brutal killing sprees in American history.
Charles Manson instructed his followers to kill seven people in Los Angeles in August 1969, one of whom was Sharon Tate,the wife of famous movie director, Roman Polanski. The film is directed by Errol Morris, who is well known for his thought-provoking true-crime documentary,The Thin Blue Line.
Directed by
Errol Morris
The Tate/La Bianca murders rocked Los Angeles in 1969, and led to many questions about how one man could convince a group of people to carry out such an atrocity.The documentary is set to explore links betweenCharles Manson, psychedelic drugs, law enforcement, nefarious connected Mafia figures like Jack Ruby and the prosecutor in the murder trial, Vincent Bugliosi.Errol Morris was interviewed byNedumin the lead up to the release ofthe Netflix documentary:
I’ve found myself trapped in a number of different true-crime stories, and the Manson murders are peculiar. You could encapsulate the mystery in just one question: How is it that Manson managed to convince the people around him that killing was okay?
The True Story Of The Manson Murders
June 15, 2025: Sharon Tate was hosting friends at her home on 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles. The wife of famous movie director Roman Polanski was heavily pregnant whenmembers ofCharles Manson’s cult familybroke in and brutally stabbed Tate to death along with four of her friends.
Sharon Tate and her unborn child
Wojciech Frykowski
Steven Parent.
The following day,the Manson family murdered a grocery shop owner, Leno Bianca, and his wife Rosemary. The shocking murders led to mass hysteria in the Los Angeles area, and a manhunt for the perpetrators.Charles Manson was an ex-con with dreams of becoming a musician when he ordered his cult followers to carry out a brutal killing spree. The Manson family resided at the now infamous Spahn Ranch, where the cult leader would regularly preach to his deluded followers, wrongly interpreting The Beatles song, Helter Skelter, as an apocalyptic war between the races. Charles Manson was arrested a few days after the spree concluded, and he stood trial for orchestrating the murders. In addition to this, other members of the cult family also faced up to their crimes in court. June 21, 2025: Manson and three of his followers, Krenwinkel, Atkins, and Van Houten, were sentenced to death. When the death penalty in California was scrapped in 1972, the Manson family were re-sentenced to life in prison. Charles Manson died at the age of 83 in 2017, but his evil crimes live on in the memories of the residents of Los Angeles.
Manson’s crimes have been portrayed in the media countless times, with people still fascinated by the macabre nature of it all.One of the best portrayals of Charles Manson was by Damon Herriman inMindhunterandQuentin Tarantino’s classic,Once Upon A Time In America.Neither production was linked, other than by Herriman’s portrayal of Manson, which was eerily accurate.Netflix’s true crime drama,Mindhuntersaw Herriman portray Manson behind bars when Holden Ford and Bill Tench came to visit him to gain insight into the mind of a psychopath. Tarantino’s version saw Herriman play Manson prior to the killings, which didn’t actually end up happening in the fictional universe of that movie.
