The Helter Skelter scenario is an apocalyptic vision that was supposedly embraced by Charles Manson and members of his Family. At the trial of Manson and three others for the Tate–LaBianca murders, the prosecution presented it as motivating the crimes and as an aspect of the case for conspiracy
Manson prophesied what he called Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war that would arise from racial tensions between black and white people.
The prophecy involved reference to the New Testament's Book of Revelation and to the Beatles' music, particularly songs from their 1968 White Album.
Writers, police detectives, attorneys involved with the case, and perpetrators have contended that the crimes were copycat killings, revenge for a bad drug deal, or a combination thereof.
Manson had been predicting racial conflict for some time before he used the term Helter Skelter. According to Paul Watkins, he first used the term at a gathering of the Family on New Year's Eve 1968 at Myers Ranch, near California's Death Valley. The apocalyptic scenario had Manson as the war's ultimate beneficiary and its musical cause. With the Family, Manson would create an album whose songs would bear messages as subtle as those he had heard in songs of the Beatles
In the vision's logic, black men would thus be deprived of the white women whom the political changes of the 1960s had made sexually available to them; they would lash out in violent crimes against whites.Manson, according to Family member Brooks Poston, "said a group of real blacks would come out of the ghettos and do an atrocious crime in the richer sections of Los Angeles and other cities. They would do an atrocious murder with stabbing, killing, cutting bodies to pieces, smearing blood on the walls, writing 'pigs' on the walls ... in the victims' own blood."
When frightened whites, according to Watkins and Tex Watson, would retaliate with a murderous rampage, militant blacks would exploit it to provoke a war of near-extermination between racist and non-racist whites over the treatment of blacks. In the wake of that, black militants would arise to finish off the few white survivors and to kill off all non-blacks.
In this holocaust, as Watkins went on to explain, the members of the enlarged Family would have little to fear; they would wait out the war in a secret city underneath Death Valley, a city they'd reach through a hole in the ground. Upon the war's conclusion, they would be the only remaining whites. Emerging from underground, they would rule the blacks, who, having "completed the white man's karma", would want no longer to kill. Proving, as Watkins explained, incapable of running the world, blacks would go to Manson, who'd "scratch [the black man's] fuzzy head and kick him in the butt and tell him to go pick the cotton and go be a good nigger.
According to Gypsy
When the Beatles' White Album came out, Charlie listened to it over and over and over and over again. He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped in to his spirit, the truth—that everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise. It wasn't that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years. Every single song on the White Album, he felt that they were singing about us. The song 'Helter Skelter'—he was interpreting that to mean the blacks were gonna go up and the whites were gonna go down
, Manson and his followers began preparing for Helter Skelter in the months before they committed the murders. They worked on songs for the hoped-for album, which they anticipated would set off everything. They prepared vehicles and other items for escape from their Los Angeles base to Death Valley, when the days of violence would arrive. They pored over maps to plot a route that would bypass highways and get them to the desert safely. Manson, according to Tex Watson, "used ... parts of the song ["Helter Skelter"] to plot out [the] escape route to the desert.
On August 8–9, Tex Watson, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel had driven to 10050 Cielo Drive, in Beverly Hills, where pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four other persons were murdered. In trial testimony, an interview with the Los Angeles Times, or autobiography, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Tex Watson stated that Manson assembled the group, whom he instructed to get weapons and changes of clothes; gave an instruction to "Go with Tex and do whatever Tex tells you to do"; and/or instructed Watson to go to the house and kill everyone in it. Using Tate's blood, Atkins wrote "Pig" on the door.
On the night of August 9–10, 1969, Manson, Linda Kasabian, Steve Grogan, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel drove to the Los Angeles home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, who were murdered. In trial testimony, an interview with the Los Angeles Times, or autobiography, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Tex Watson stated that Manson guided the group to the home, directed the tying-up of the LaBiancas or said he'd tied them up, or gave instruction as to the killings.[ In Leno LaBianca’s blood, Krenwinkel wrote "Healter Skelter" on the refrigerator and “Rise" and "Death to Pigs" on walls
Manson delivered the Helter Skelter prophecy around a campfire at Myers Ranch. As Family members listened to the White Album repeatedly over the following days, they believed it:
Manson "spent hours quoting and interpreting Revelation to the Family, particularly verses from chapter 9".
Watson wrote that the Bible had "absolutely no meaning in our life in the Family" apart from Revelation chapter 9
