Biography

Charles "Tex" Watson was the tactical ringleader of some of the most brutal murders in the annals of American history. Though ultimate culpability for the murders was shifted by Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and the media on Charles Manson, there is enough evidence to believe that Watson was equally responsible legally and morally for at least eight of the murders, all of which he served as one of the executioners.

Bugliosi used his "Helter Skelter" theory to successfully convict Manson and several of his female compatriots of seven murders: the Tate-LaBianca killings that shocked America and the world (the victims included heavily-pregnant movie star Sharon Tate), two orgies of murder on consecutive nights in August 1969 in which Watson played the lead role in executing the killings, allegedly on the direct orders of Charles Manson. Watson was tried separately from Manson and his female followers, due to his lawyers fighting extradition from his native Texas, to where he fled after the murder spree.

Watson and Manson subsequently were convicted of murdering Donald "Shorty" Shea, a movie stunt-man and hand at the Spahn Ranch where Manson, his cronies (including Tex) and his female groupies congregated. The prosecution successfully portrayed Manson as engineering the murder of the ranch hand as revenge on Shea, whom Manson allegedly believed had snitched on him to the police after the Tate-LaBianca murders. (Manson was convicted of a ninth murder, pre-dating the Tate-LaBianca and Shea killings, the killing of music teacher and small-time drug dealer Gary Hinman by Manson confederate Bobby Beausoleil.)

All of the perpetrators of the Tate-LaBianca murders were condemned to death upon conviction, but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by the State of California after a 1972 Supreme Court decision struck down extant death penalties in the various states. Although Manson never did any of the actual killing, under the rules of accomplice liability, he was deemed as responsible for the killings as the actual perpetrators who caused the deaths of the nine people by their own hands. Extremely colorful, Manson and his women overshadowed Tex, who was not tried with them and thus escaped the media circus Charlie dominated. Tex Watson used this shifting of culpability onto Manson to portray himself as a victim, rather than as an equal accomplice of the one-time car thief and convicted forgerer and pimp. Nazis and other perpetrators of holocausts often have used the "I was just following orders" defense.

In the years since the convictions, Watson has actively sought parole, claiming he found religion and redemption while in prison. As long as the memories of the merciless and brutal murders of Sharon Tate and her unborn baby resonate in the American consciousness, it is unlikely he ever will get out of prison.