After spending a week in a Bakersfield, Calif., prison, Charles Manson died on Sunday at 8:13 p.m. The notorious cult leader of the 1960s and convicted murderer was serving nine concurrent life sentences and was 83 when he died.
Authorities list “natural causes” as Manson’s cause of death, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It simply means that he wasn’t killed by anything other than disease or a natural process — i.e., he was not murdered, nor did he overdose on drugs or alcohol, nor did he die by suicide.
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Authorities aren’t saying what specific natural cause led to Manson’s death. He had been in the hospital since Sunday, Nov. 13. Bakersfield law enforcement confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Manson had been hospitalized, but state prison officials declined to comment on his condition, citing federal and state medical privacy laws that preclude the agency “from commenting on protected health information for any inmate in our custody.”
This marks the second time since January that Manson had been hospitalized, with his health reportedly declining for the past year. In January, he was hospitalized with an unnamed condition described as “serious.” It was later revealed that he needed to undergo surgery but was deemed too weak to live through the procedure.
Manson had reportedly been extremely reclusive in the last few years of his life. He did not attend his parole hearing in 2012; in fact, the lawyer representing him at said trial had not even met him.
CNN reports that Manson’s mental health was in disarray. A member of his two-person parole board said that Manson had a catalogue of problems with his mental health, among them “schizophrenia” and “a paranoid delusional disorder.” He added that Manson also had a history of using drugs like LSD, amphetamines and barbiturates.
While he was in the hospital, uniformed prison guards monitored him 24/7 and escorted him to and from treatments.
“It’s not going to get any better for him,” a source told TMZ at the time. “”It’s just a matter of time.”
