Cult leader and killer Charles Manson looks less menacing in new photo

The face of evil is now an old man.

California prison officials on Wednesday took a new mug shot of cult leader and convicted killer Charles Manson. It was part of a routine update of inmate files.

He's balding, his neck needs a shave, and the small swastika he carved into his forehead during his long-ago trial is faint. He's 74.

It's a stark contrast to the image most of us conjure up when we think of Charles Manson. You know the one. The wild hair. The wilder eyes.

That Manson got four of his followers from his "family" to murder seven people in Southern California in the summer of 1969. Left behind were messages scrawled in blood: "DEATH TO PIGS," "HELTER SKELTER," "RISE." Manson said the Beatles and the Bible made him do it.

"WAR" was etched with a fork onto the stomach of one of the victims; another, actor Sharon Tate, was 8 1/2 months pregnant.

Manson became a part of the cultural conversation. People called him evil incarnate. His followers said they saw him as both God and the devil. Rolling Stone called him "the villain of our time."

Manson had a different message:

I am you.

"If you want to see a vicious killer, that's who you'll see …," he said in an interview after the murders. "If you see me as your brother, that's what I'll be. It all depends on how much love you have. I am you, and when you can admit that, you will be free.

"I am just a mirror."

Back then, Manson said many times that he was as good as dead. Thing was, that photo was not of a dead man. Those eyes? Those eyes were thoroughly, frighteningly, undeniably alive.

The old image is compelling because it is kinetic. That still photo moves.

Now we have this new image.

Does he look angry? Hard to tell.

Does he look sad? Not really.

Mostly Manson just looks old.

"I am only what you made me," he said nearly 40 years ago. "I am only a reflection of you."

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.