Category Archives: Life & Death

CHARLES MANSON’S REAL MOTIVE FOR HIS CULT MURDERS

When you read the words “cult” and “murders” in the same line, you’ll evoke evil images of Charles Manson motivating his murderous hippie cult to commit Helter Skelter—an apocalyptic race war between blacks and whites. The picture of wild-eyed Manson with a swastika carved in his forehead, and the sight of his head-shaven girls occupying the courthouse steps, seared themselves into American criminal history. Charles Manson is finally dead, but his memory lives on in villainous infamy. However, Charles Manson’s real motive for his cult murders wasn’t Helter Skelter. That’s bullshit. Pure bullshit. But Manson’s true motive always remained shrouded in secrecy—until now.

During the summer of 1969, Charles Manson’s cult of social misfits and rebellious rejects went on a homicidal rampage in the greater Los Angeles area. At least ten innocent victims lost their lives. The high-profile Manson family mass-murders claimed actress Sharon Tate and her celebrity friends who were shot, strangled and stabbed to death. Business people Rosemary and Leno LaBianca fell as well to Manson-ordered, cult-wielding knives. Charles Manson was also directly responsible for three or more individual murders associated with Manson’s criminal enterprise.

Throughout the Manson Family murder trial, district attorney and prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi pleaded a case that Charles Manson masterminded the Tate and LaBianca murders, although Manson wasn’t hands-on during the killings. Bugliosi argued Manson exercised totalitarian mind control over his cult members and convinced them to commit murder on his behalf.

Manson’s motive, Bugliosi offered, was Charles Manson proclaimed he was the reincarnation of a Jesus-like messiah who’d rule the world following an inevitable race war between blacks and whites. Manson called this Helter Skelter. Bugliosi’s case rested on the motive theory that Manson organized the Tate and LaBianca murders to frame the Black Panther movement and start his imaginary race Armageddon.

Bugliosi claimed Manson’s convoluted motive was personal gain and control after Helter Skelter occurred. Helter Skelter was a term Charles Manson adopted from the Beatles White Album that Manson claimed described the race war and its fallout. There’s no doubt from the trial evidence that Manson preached Helter Skelter to his cult, and they took it hook, line and sinker. The Helter Skelter motive theory was enough to convince a jury to convict Manson and six family members of first-degree murder, sending them to death row. Their capital sentences were eventually reduced to life in prison where many still remain.

Now, after nearly 50 years, the theory of Charles Manson’s bizarre Helter Skelter motive no longer stands the sniff test. It’s nonsense, and Manson knew it. As a clever and cunning con man, Manson didn’t believe his own bullshit. He had a much different motive for ordering his followers to carry out the Tate and LaBianca slayings. Charles Manson’s real motive for his cult murders was to cover-up another crime.

Charles Manson’s Criminal Background

If ever there was someone born to be a career criminal, it was Charles Manson. His birth mother was a disturbed teenager from Cincinnati, Ohio. There’s doubt about who Manson’s biological father was, but he took the surname Manson from a man who married his mother while she was still pregnant. The name on his birth certificate was Charles Milles Maddox after his biological mother’s maiden name.

Manson’s mother spent his childhood years revolving in and out of jail. She was a destitute alcoholic, and Manson bounced between her relatives. He relocated to an aunt’s home in Charleston, West Virginia and then to another aunt’s place in Indianapolis. By age ten, Charles Manson was already incorrigible. He was caught breaking into a house and stealing a gun.

At twelve, Manson was incarcerated in a Terre Haute, Indiana juvenile delinquent home. He escaped and survived by living on the streets of Indianapolis. Now Manson graduated from break-ins to stealing cars. By his 14th birthday, Charles Manson was sentenced to five years in a Nebraska prison for armed robbery.

Manson had a rough go in the penitentiary. He was a little man with big little-man syndrome. Even as an adult, Charles Manson only stood 5’ 2” and weighed 125 lbs. Much larger prisoners repeatedly raped and sodomized tiny Manson. He developed a defense mechanism that would be a lifelong trademark. Charles Manson pretended to be crazy, and the act worked for him.

Manson got paroled in 1954 and moved to Ohio. Soon, he was back into stealing cars and took one for a ride to Los Angeles. He supported himself through thefts, break-ins and robberies but found time to get a girl pregnant and marry her. Manson also learned to make extra money by pimping-out his new wife.

In 1956, Charles Manson was back in the federal prison system for another five-year stint. This time he was psychologically evaluated and deemed to aggressively antisocial. His prison IQ test scored 119 with the national average being 100. The shrinks said there was nothing crazy about Charles Manson. In fact, he was quite bright.

Manson conned his way into early parole. He was out by 1958 and practicing a new trade which he’d learned from the pros in prison. Charles Manson began assembling a harem and lived off the avails of prostitution. He’d realized it was easier and safer to get others to commit crimes for him.

But, like other criminal ventures Charles Manson tried, he got caught again when one of the girls turned on him. As well, Manson had been kiting bad checks which was a federal offense. Manson was back in the pen in 1959.—this time for a ten-year sentence.

Manson’s Musical, Scientology and Carnegie Influence

Charles Manson played the prison system well. He used the crazy act when convenient but also took some schooling. Another psychiatric assessment identified Manson’s “tremendous drive to call attention to himself”. By accident or design, Manson was cellmates with the infamous bank robber, Alvin Karpis. It was Karpis who taught Charles Manson to play the guitar.

Manson learned several more skills in prison. He became an astute student of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Manson also studied Scientology. Persuading people and gathering large groups became Charles Manson’s burning desire. His intent upon freedom was to use his musical aptitude, his charm and his con-man conversion skills to gather a female following. Originally, Manson’s game was nothing more than a front for a profitable prostitution ring and a try at building a music audience.

In 1967, Manson made parole again. Now he was in Washington State where he’d been transferred within the federal system. The timing was right for strands of fate to align and begin building Charles Manson’s deadly hippie cult. He moved to San Francisco.

This was the “summer of love” and the peak of the California counter-culture of hippies and freeloaders centered in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Many of the hippies were disenchanted girls from broken homes or strict families. The hippie lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll was uber-attractive to these vulnerable kids. It was the perfect position for a perverted predator like Charles Manson to exploit.

Manson arrived in San Francisco at the height of the hippie movement. Now, he had two distinct and definite purposes. One was to start a prostitution ring. The other was to build a music career. Manson was smart enough to know he needed a following for both goals. He put his guitar, Carnegie and Scientology skills to work and assembled his family.

The Manson Family Cult Members

Today, most of the main Manson Family members are household names. Everyone knows about Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford. And, of course, Susan “Sadie” Atkins is well known. So are Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, Linda Kasabian, Mary Bruner and Diane Lake.

Although Manson’s intention was to build a female following, there were a few young men who joined the family. Noteworthy were Charles “Tex” Watson, Steve “Clem” Grogan, Bruce Davis and a good-looking young guy by the name of Bobby Beausoleil. All four would eventually go down for murders orchestrated by Charles Manson.

Looking at the Manson Family objectively, it wasn’t Charles Manson’s original intention to build a cult. His big drive was to be famous through music, and he needed a built-in audience to attract a record label. Manson was fascinated by the Beatles’ success and their music. He intended to follow their path. The cult-thing was an accidental by-product of his grandiose delusion of stardom.

A cult can be either destructive or non-destructive. Generally, a cult is an organization of followers with a charismatic leader who preaches false information. Scientology is clearly a cult, but they don’t seem to go around killing people. The Charles Manson Family did. They were about as destructive a cult as you can find.

You’ve got to give Charles Manson some credit for both drive and balls. While in prison with Karpis, Manson got a lead on a Los Angeles record producer named Phil Kaufman who Karpis knew from the outside. Kaufman was business partners with the influential recording producer, Terry Melcher, who was Doris Day’s son. Melcher was also the producer for big names like the Beach Boys, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Mommas and Poppas.

Charles Manson amassed about 100 followers who he plied with psychedelic drugs and mesmerized their strung-out brains with messiah-like preaching about Beatle song interpretations. He gained his audience in San Francisco but knew the music action was in L.A. In 1969, Manson packed up the family and headed south. He tracked down Terry Melcher and talked his way into Melcher’s home at 10050 Cielo Drive in north Los Angeles. This was the home Sharon Tate was about to occupy.

Terry Melcher wasn’t impressed with Manson’s musical talent, but he took an interest in Manson’s personality. Melcher never outright turned Manson down for a record deal. He encouraged Manson to keep writing, practicing and building an audience. Manson took Melcher’s advice to heart, and did just that.

Manson and the Beach Boys

Charles Manson’s big musical break came by total fluke. Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys picked up two of Manson’s girls who were hitchhiking. Seeing them as an easy sexual mark, Wilson took the girls back to his Los Angeles mansion and had his way. Once the two returned to the family and told Manson about the encounter, Charles Manson saw a tremendous opportunity. He had the audacity to take 20 of his female followers and invade Wilson’s house.

Tempted by unlimited sex, Dennis Wilson let the Manson Family stay until they wore out their welcome a few months later. By then, Manson and his followers sponged tens of thousands of dollars off Wilson and his associates. The Wilson connection gave Manson access to big names like Neil Young who Manson had many jam-sessions with.

In the spring of 1969, Manson was going nowhere in his music world and his grip on his cult was loosening. People dropped off and recruiting was slow now that the counter-culture revolution had run its course. Manson wasn’t interested in retaining men, but he did everything to hang onto women. They were still his bread and butter. That continued to work as long as he supplied them with drugs and continued to make them feel valued.

One thing about running a cult is that it’s hard work. It takes a lot of supplies and energy to keep up the charade. Manson constantly needed to take his game to a higher step to retain control. He did this by preaching Helter Skelter, and it worked.

By now, Charles Manson had convinced his hard-core followers that he was a messiah—the “Son of Man”. He played on their fears and hopes where he predicted a race war between blacks and whites where the blacks would kill all the whites and then turn to the Manson Family for leadership. This was all bullshit, of course, and Manson knew it.

However, this Helter Skelter nonsense acted as glue for the family and they bought it. To buy time while he pursued other music leads, Charles Manson upped his preaching game. He also upped his LSD and methamphetamine supply. For that, they needed money, and this got Manson in a pickle.

The Start of the Manson Family Murders

After Manson and the family left Dennis Wilson’s place they couch surfed, leaching off whoever would tolerate them. One place was next door to 3301 Waverly Drive in north Los Angeles—the home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. After that brief stay, Manson found an old movie set called the Spahn Ranch in the desert northwest of L.A.

Manson paid his rent to eighty-year-old George Spahn in sexual favors performed by his girls. With this new spot and its remote location, Manson now had more control over who was coming and going in the family. One of the newcomers was a 21-year-old wanna-be musician, Bobby Beausoleil.

Charles Manson was under constant pressure to fund his family. It took money to pay for drugs, food and vehicles that the Manson Family required. Most of their money came from prostitution, drug trafficking and petty theft. From that, they barely scraped by. Charles Manson saw an opportunity and hatched a plan for a big money score.

One of Manson’s musical acquaintances was Gary Hinman who was a quiet and well-educated man. Hinman found Manson and his followers interesting but had no desire to join them. Manson heard a rumor that Hinman recently acquired a large inheritance, so Manson sent Bobby Beausoleil and Susan Atkins to check it out.

Gary Hinman knew Beausoleil and Atkins. He willingly let them in. Both Atkins and Beausoleil were drugged and unstable. When they approached Hinman to join their family, he again declined. The conversation turned to money, and Hinman put his foot down. It turned ugly. The Manson Family members took Hinman hostage and began torturing him.

Beausoleil phoned Manson back at the ranch and told him they weren’t getting anywhere with Hinman. They asked for Manson’s direction. Manson told Atkins and Beausoleil to keep Hinman tied up till he got there. Once Manson arrived, he took over, cutting Hinman’s ear off to set an example.

Hinman still refused to give in. In frustration, Manson took Atkins and left—telling Beausoleil, “You know what to do.” Manson also told Beausoleil to make the scene look like the Black Panthers were involved, reminding Beausoleil of the apocalyptic doom of Helter Skelter.

Bobby Beausoleil took that as a clear signal and authorization from his leader—Charles Manson—to kill Gary Hinman. With Manson gone, Bobby Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death while Hinman stayed tied to a chair. Beausoleil then wrote “Pig” on the front door in Hinman’s blood as well as leaving a bloody paw print which was the Black Panther symbol.

Beausoleil was drugged, fatigued and not thinking straight. He stole Hinman’s car, hid the knife in the trunk and drove from the scene. Within hours, the police found Bobby Beausoleil asleep in Hinman’s stolen car. His clothes were bloody and so was the murder weapon still in the trunk. The police backtracked, found Hinman’s body and charged Bobby Beausoleil with first-degree murder.

Charles Manson Plans the Tate & LaBianca Murders

Beausoleil’s arrest worried Charles Manson. He was concerned—really concerned—that Bobby Beausoleil would crack, squeal and implicate Charles Manson as a murder accomplice. That got the wheels turning in Manson’s head, and his convoluted logic kicked in.

Charles Manson calculated that if similar murders occurred with a modus operandi (MO) like what Beausoleil did to Hinman, then the police would have to conclude the real killers were still out there. Therefore, they’d have to drop the charges, release Bobby Beausoleil and the heat would be off Charles Manson.

Manson figured he’d put his other family members to work by casing out locations and finding suitable murder victims. He knew he could convince his most-trusted lieutenants who accepted his Helter Skelter prophesies. Manson gathered them and said it was now time to start Helter Skelter. He said nothing about covering up the botched Gary Hinman murder.

The first place Manson targeted was 10050 Cielo Drive. Manson knew Terry Melcher moved out. In fact, Manson came face-to-face with Sharon Tate when he went looking for Melcher one day. Manson picked Tate’s residence for two reasons. One was he knew that celebrity murders would get a lot of attention. Secondly, Manson was familiar with the layout.

On the night of August 8, 1969 Charles Manson instructed Tex Watson to take Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian and kill everyone inside 10050 Ceilo Drive. Manson also directed them to make the scene look like a Black Panther attack by writing bloody messages on the walls. He implicitly said this was the start of Helter Skelter and it was their privilege to carry it out.

The drug-fueled cult members bought every word of it. Without going into graphic details, the Manson Family members cold-bloodedly killed Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abagail Folger, Voytec Frykowski and an innocent visitor named Steve Parent.

One mass killing wasn’t good enough for Charles Manson. The next night, Manson accompanied the same murderous group to the LaBianca house on Waverly Drive. This time he took along Leslie Van Houten and Clem Grogan. Again, Manson didn’t get his hands bloody. He picked the LaBianca home simply because he knew the layout and that they were wealthy. Once Manson located the home, he left and the Manson Family cult members went in for the kill.

Bit by bit, Manson’s grip on his cult slipped away. It took a while for the police to connect the Tate and LaBianca murders and find evidence linking the Manson cult to the crimes. Even when the police raided the Spahn Ranch and arrested Manson and his remaining followers on car theft suspicion, they failed to make any connection to the August murder spree. It wasn’t until Susan Atkins opened her mouth in jail that the cat came out of the bag.

Many of the Manson Family members testified at the Tate and LaBianca murder trials. Each one attributed the motive to Charles Manson’s Helter Skelter vision. One can’t blame them for revealing this as the motive because that’s what they honestly believed. Only Charles Manson knew his real motive for his cult killings. That’s a secret Manson took to the grave with him.

*   *   *

I’m not making up this theory about Charles Manson’s real motive for his cult murders. Vincent Bugliosi is on the record for purporting the Gary Hinman murder connection as the real reason why Manson ordered the Tate and LiBianca “copy-cat” killings. It makes sense when you think about it.

Charles Manson was a psychopath, but he wasn’t psychotic. He was a shrewd little con-man and a calculating criminal. His entire MO was using people to commit criminal acts, and his cult following—which was supposed to be a Beatles-like fan club—got carried away into one of the most notorious murder cases in history. It was all about covering up a crime gone bad.

If you’re interested in a fascinating look at how Charles Manson built and controlled his cult, I suggest reading a 2015 undergraduate honors thesis by Robin Altman of the University of Colorado, Boulder. It’s titled Sympathy for the Devil: Charles Manson’s Exploitation of California’s 1960 Counter-Culture. It also concludes Manson’s motive for the Tate & LaBianca murders was to cover up Bobby Beausoleil’s blotched job and isolate Manson.

HOW COPS HARASS CITIZENS — THE WETASKIWIN, ALBERTA WAY

Police harassment is a serious issue. No one wants to be hassled by the cops. That’s true, but the vast number of contacts between the police and the public are really good. However, there’re rare times where some cops overstep their civil boundaries and exercise questionable behavior when dealing with citizens. Then, there’s time for fun.

Most police harassment complaints are trumped up or leave something out about what started the conflict. Over my years in policing, I can honestly say I never saw a case where an officer intentionally went overboard without there being some sort of provocation on a citizen’s part. Maybe that’s because I’m from Canada where we’ve got polite policing down to a science—especially our red-coated Mounties who start reading suspect rights with a “Sorry”.

I won’t say legitimate police harassment doesn’t happen. But, I will say there’re usually two sides to a story. Speaking of stories, I got a laugh the other day when a friend shipped me a letter from Wetaskiwin’s local newspaper. For those who’ve never heard of Wetaskiwin, it’s a small town 40 miles south of Edmonton, in the Province of Alberta in western Canada. Like so many Canadian prairie towns, Wetaskiwin has the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) maintaining their right.

They’ve also got an RCMP Sergeant with a great sense of humor. Part of the Wetaskiwin, Alberta RCMP detachment’s community service is maintaining a newspaper crime page. This article was so bang-on that I had to steal the content and post it on DyingWords. With no apologies for plagiarism or copyright invasion, here’s how the good Sergeant replied to this reader question:

 “I’d like to know how it’s possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?”

Sergeant Dooright: “First off, let me tell you this—it ain’t easy. In Wetaskiwin and rural surrounding areas, we average one cop for every 505 people. Only about 60 percent of our cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as “general patrols”). This is where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing units that don’t allow them to contact with day to day innocents. And, at any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60 percent of general patrols are on duty and available for harassing people. The rest are off duty. They don’t want to be bothered harassing people on their own time.

So, roughly, one cop is responsible for regularly harassing about 6000 permanent residents at any given time. When you toss in the commercial business and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you got a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 15,000 people a day. Or maybe even more.

Consider this—your average cop’s eight-hour shift runs 28,800 seconds long. This gives that cop only two-thirds of a second to harass a person. Then they have just another third of a second to sip a Tim Horton’s coffee, scarf a donut, and then find a new person to harass. This isn’t an easy task. Far from it.

To be honest, most cops aren’t up to the challenge day in and day out. It’s just too tiring. What we do is utilize some trade tools to help narrow down those people we can realistically spend time giving quality harassment.

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. For example, “My neighbor is beating his wife” is a code phrase often used. This means we’ll come out and give somebody some special harassment. Another popular one is, “There’s a guy breaking into a house.” The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance, or drivers with no licenses and the like. It’s lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk or have an outstanding warrant on file.

LAWS: When we don’t have phones or cars and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They’re called “Statutes”. These include the Crimes Act, Summary Offences Act, Land Transport Act and a whole bunch of others.

Laws spell out all sorts of things for how you can really mess with people. After you read the law, you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week, I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, the book says that’s not allowed. That meant I had permission to harass this guy.

It is a really cool system we’ve set up, and it works pretty well. We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because, for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to “harass” some people.

Next time you’re in small-town Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada, give me the old “single finger wave”. That’s another one of those codes. It means, “You can harass me.” It’s one of our favorite harassment go-aheads—and I love getting away with it.”

WHAT REALLY CAUSED THE SALEM WITCH HUNTS

The Salem witch hunts and mass executions of innocent victims falsely accused of sorcery is an American historical black mark. Through June to October of 1692, Puritan authorities in Salem, Massachusetts hung nineteen citizens after trying and convicting them for witchcraft. They crushed another man to death with heavy stones, and let five others perish—shackled in chains. Two imprisoned souls were mere children.

Today, all Salem witch hunt victims are officially exonerated. This terrible debacle became the poster case for trumped-up accusations and wrongful convictions. In fact, the term “witch hunt” is symbolic for going after those profiled for a vengeance need or paranoid forces “out to get someone”. Even the current United States president Twitters-on about witch hunts.

This horrific travesty of malicious injustice was an American turning point. Historians call the Salem witch trials the rock upon which theocracy shattered. They were the perfect storm of isolationism, religious extremism, fanaticism and divided socio-economic structure. The witch trials were also unprecedented as bad jurisprudence and a miscarriage of justice.

Today, few educated or rational people believe in evil witchcraft or black magic. (Modern peaceful Wiccan practitioners are a different matter.) That old destructive medieval and ignorant mindset sieved from America after the Salem witch trials. But, for over three centuries, few people understood why the disaster happened. Various theories suggested Freudian mass-hysterics, a widespread fungus causing mind-altering behavior and even meddling by alien forces aligned with the dark side.

Now the truth is out there. A meticulous, scientific study by two American academics published in the book Salem Possessed wraps up the witch hunt reason. It’s not some supernatural power or psychedelic drug. The answer lies in a complex mix of sociology, geography, demography, human psychology and forensic pathology. Something far more sinister than sorcery really caused the Salem witch hunts.

History of the Salem Witch Hunts

It trigged with teenagers. In January 1692, three bored girls played a game similar to today’s Ouija Board. They cracked eggs and separated the whites in a pan of cold water, then used imagination to decipher patterns divulging hidden secrets and foretelling future events. They got carried away. Soon they were writhing in fits and cramping into twisted contortions.

The girls were relatives of Salem Village vicar Samuel Parris, a Massachusetts Bay Puritan parishioner who referred the distorted girls to a local physician. The doctor found no medical cause for the girls’ discomfort. He suggested it was work of witchcraft and turned it back to the minister. The reverend sided with Satanic superstition and went about extracting accusations from the young girls.

They implicated three Salem women for bewitching and causing their erratic behavior—Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. Good was known for tardy church attendance. Osborne was a loose-moraled beggar. And Tituba was a Carib slave house servant. The trio were hardly credible to Salem’s upper crust and certainly suitable scapegoats not equipped to defend themselves.

Good and Osborne fervently denied being witches. Despite intensive interrogation in magistrate’s court, they held to their denials. Tituba, on the other hand, confessed. She gave wild accounts of signing Satan’s book and offered crazy tales of human hogs, great black dogs, red cats and yellow birds. Tituba also named of other Salem witches.

From there, everyone got carried away. Authorities rounded-up scores of witch suspects, hauling them before interrogatories. More people—women and men—confessed under duress and named more names. In a few months, nearly two hundred “witches” were accused, hunted down and arrested in Salem and neighboring communities. Quickly, the arrests turned to trials and mass hangings began.

The 17th Century Salem Legal System

1692 was an important year in 17th Century Salem’s legal system. It coincided with a new charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay following the 1680s King William War. The colonists were deeply divided in Salem and the surrounding area’s social structure. It was protective Puritism vs. progressive private enterprise. The King’s newly-appointed Governor, William Phip, arrived with the charter in January,1692—just as the witchcraft accusations arose.

The spiraling sequence of accusations, arrests and confession led to mass hysteria and a “thronged” legal system. To accommodate justice, Governor Phip convened a Special Court of Oyer (hearing) and Terminer (deciding). He appointed magistrates, judges and sheriffs based on local recommendations by powerful people in the religious sphere.

The Salem witch trials occurred long before the United States Constitution was a gleam in revolutionary eyes. Rules of evidence stemmed from English common law and principles based on religious doctrine. For witchcraft cases, evidence came from accusatory mouths of uneducated and manipulated common folk, not from corroborated independent and credible witnesses.

Once a citizen claimed their loss or discomfort was witchcraft caused, they laid a complaint against the accused before an appointed magistrate. If the complaint appeared credible by the magistrate’s standard, the accused was arrested and brought in for mandatory interrogation. This was well before the right to remain silent.

Interrogations were public events. Open questions by a panel and audience members given standing were standard procedure. Every effort pressed the accused to confess and reveal other witches. It was a Puritanical purging of Salem’s evils and a chance to rid society of undesirables. Once a grand jury heard interrogation evidence, they preferred an indictment and the ‘witch” was set on trial.

Witch trials depended on what’s called “spectral evidence”. This was testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition of the accused witch appear in a ghostly form while performing witchcraft upon them. Theologically, the court evidence relied on whether or not the accused gave the Devil permission to use their shape. The Salem witch courts contended the Devil could not perform evil acts using a person’s shape without that person’s expressed permission—therefore, if the afflicted complainant had seen the accused’s shape—it was in facto proof the accused was guilty of witchcraft and complicit with the Devil. According to Puritan law, the witch must die.

This convoluted logic resulted in immediate hangings and a compression death through layered stoning. It also caused deaths of those awaiting trial while shackled in dungeons. In three months, twenty-four innocent people were dead and many more awaited similar fates. That’s until someone accused Governor Phip’s wife of being a witch.

Suddenly, the executions stopped. Phip ordered an evidentiary review. It determined spectral evidence was inadmissible, noting it was not credible and highly prejudicial to the accused. Phip stayed the remaining execution warrants and commuted sentences, essentially freeing all those facing witchcraft allegations. Within three years, the Province of Massachusetts Bay officially exonerated all accused witches and ordered a consolidating day of fast and remembrance.

Cause of the Salem Witch Hunts

Many historians and writers pondered how normally rational people got so swept by the wind of witchcraft craze. Certainly, there was a mass psychological hysteria and paranoia. But the actual reason—the root cause—of why so many witch accusers and so many accused witches behaved so bizarrely was unknown. For years, suspected causes for bewitched symptoms like convulsing and hallucinating fell on the Claviceps purpurea fungus found in Puritan bread. It’s known for LSD-like side effects.

But a bread acid trip didn’t cut current standards, even though the mass hysteria was long-explained by archaic superstitions of wanton witchcraft and the Devil’s demons. Everybody ate Puritan bread in Salem, and only a few presented weird symptoms. No, a rational look at the Salem witch hunts needed further investigation by reasonable and independent thinkers.

That rationality came from two Harvard-educated history professors at the University of Massachusetts who wrote the intriguing book Salem Possessed. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s work took an in-depth look at the social, economic and geographical factors affecting Salem’s citizens back when the witch hunts started. They also took a forensic approach to the psychological and pathological influences causing the complainant’s symptoms.

Boyer and Nissenbaum came to an astounding social conclusion. However, they weren’t the first to arrive there. In 1867, New England historian Charles W. Upham produced an accurate map of how Salem Village appeared in 1692. Then he plotted the houses where witch accusers and accused witches lived. Astonishingly, almost all accusers lived on the west side of Salem Village. The accused lived on the east side.

Salem Possessed’s authors concluded that if the Devil had come to Salem, he was being very choosy about which homes he visited. No, they concluded. The reason for the witch hunts had to lie in Salem’s history, and they were right.

Salem is one of the oldest European settlements in North America’s New England region. As the crow flies, it’s less than twenty miles northeast of downtown Boston. English immigrants of the Puritan faith first occupied Salem to establish a community based on their conservative views to protect old ways threatened by the age of Enlightenment and the then-liberal Anglican Church.

The Puritans were agricultural people. Naturally, they chose to settle in the best farmland which lay to the west of Massachusetts Bay. Over the course of eighty years—roughly four generations back then—the Puritans built a religious and agricultural society centered around what they called Salem Village. Today, the area is known as Danvers, Massachusetts which is a different jurisdiction from present-day Salem.

During the mid-1600s, a harbor community developed on Massachusetts Bay, east of the village. It became known as Salem Town. Commercially progressive settlers occupied Salem Town and focused on making money rather than praising the Lord and preserving old ways. As Salem Town grew, it pressed westward and crossed the border into the village. That didn’t sit well with the Puritan villagers.

Boyer and Nissenbaum uncovered a tangled history of feuds, jealousy, mistrust and hostility between the west Salem villagers and their eastern invaders. West Salem had two tightly-knit prominent families who married within. The easterners were a mix of newcomers who married outside family lines. For some reason, everyone who displayed physical symptoms of being witch victims came from the two prominent Puritan families.

From a socio-economic and religious point, it’s clear the impact of commercial capitalism and the shifting role of the church left the backward Puritans threatened by their modern newcomers. It led to unbearable tensions which broke once the first bewitched symptoms showed in January of 1692. That opened a floodgate of superstitious opportunity to kill the eastern Salem villagers.

Salem Possessed makes a powerful argument that human personality partially caused the Salem witch hunts. If that be the Devil in humanity, then so be it. However, the Devil isn’t a good forensic reason for why the teen girls experienced peculiar symptoms like mood swings, cramps and hysterical contortions. Something else was at work, and the pathology points at genetics.

Putting it bluntly, the Puritans were inbred. Their closed circle was more than religious and economic. They married within and secluded their gene pool. Huntington’s Chorea or Huntington’s Disease is common in people with dysfunctional genes. It’s a hereditary neurodegenerative illness with physical, cognitive and emotional symptoms exactly like the west Salem village girls experienced. The gene mutation creates a protein that kills cells in the brain’s cerebral cortex.

Many adults in the Puritan community already had some stage of Huntington’s Disease. That impaired their thought processes as well as their offspring’s. Because of longevity in the Salem region and that power still clung to the Puritan Church in the late 1600s, Puritans made up the judicial force that persecuted the alleged witches. Their personality and pathology dysfunction is what really caused the Salem witch hunts.

For three centuries, lore held that the witches of Salem were hung from scaffolding in the center of today’s Gallows Park. That’s not correct. Several years ago, the Gallows Project funded by the University of Massachusetts did a thorough research based on historical records and advanced forensic techniques like GPS analyzation and ground penetrating radar. They conclusively identified the execution spot as a tree at Proctor’s Ledge. It’s right beside a Walgreens and the community built a small memorial honoring the wrongfully-accused witches of Salem.