Convicted serial murderer Charles Manson has been taken from a California prison to a local hospital in Bakersfield, central California, according to reports.
Prison officials have not confirmed the reports, and the sources, including Hollywood gossip outlet TMZ and the Los Angeles Times, have not specified why he was hospitalized.
The 82-year-old Manson has been in prison since 1971, serving nine life sentences for a series of seven murders over two consecutive nights in August 1969. Among the victims was actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski. She was eight and a half months pregnant when she was killed.
The victims were stabbed, shot and beaten to death.
Manson carried out the murders with the help of a small gang of cult followers known as the “Manson Family.” Prosecutors said they conducted the bloody murders in an effort to start a race war that Manson believed was foretold in the Beatles song “Helter Skelter.”
Manson has been denied parole 12 times. His next parole hearing is scheduled for 2027, when he will be 92 years old. Parole has been denied him over and over because the California Parole Board has said repeatedly that he shows no remorse for the murders.
Five of his followers were also jailed. Manson and those followers were all given the death penalty in 1971. A year later when California abolished the death penalty, their sentences were commuted to life in prison.
One of the convicted killers, Susan Atkins, died of cancer in prison in 2009. Another, Patricia Krenwinkel, is now California’s longest-serving female prison inmate.
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