cult leader

Stephen Kay was a fresh-faced prosecutor just 27 years old and three years out of law school when circumstances handed him the Manson “family” murder case.

A former Charles Manson pen pal wants a Los Angeles judge to order DNA testing of a 43-year-old Florida man who contends he is Manson’s grandson, saying the weight of evidence disputes the claim of the cult leader’s alleged kin.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom overruled a parole board’s decision to free Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten on Monday, marking the third time a governor has stopped the release of the youngest member of Manson’s murderous cult. Van Houten, 69, is still a threat, Newsom said, though she has spent nearly half a century behind bars and received reports of...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom overruled a parole board’s decision to free Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten on Monday, marking the third time a governor has stopped the release of the youngest member of Manson’s murderous cult. Van Houten, 69, is still a threat, Newsom said, though she has spent nearly half a century behind bars and received reports of...

A self-help guru groomed women for sex, subjecting them to “shame and humiliation” and threatening to expose their “deepest, darkest secrets” if they didn’t comply with his wishes, a federal prosecutor said on Tuesday.

It was called “collateral” — nude photos and other embarrassing material that female members of an upstate New York self-improvement group turned over to their “masters” to ensure obedience, silence and sexual fealty to the organization’s spiritual leader, Keith Raniere. Now some former members of the group, NXIVM, are poised to break their vow of silence for the first time...

A California panel on Wednesday recommended that Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten be paroled after serving more than four decades in prison. After a hearing at the women’s prison in Corona, California, commissioners of the Board of Parole Hearings found for the third time that the 69-year-old Van Houten was suitable for release.

Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara and six of his followers were executed Friday for their roles in a deadly 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subways and other crimes, closing a chapter on one of Japan’s most shocking crimes in recent memory. During the morning rush hour of March 20, 1995, members of the Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyo cult punctured plastic...

A purported son of cult leader Charles Manson is dropping his fight for the killer’s estate and another possible heir is in jeopardy of being booted from the case.

A grandson of cult leader Charles Manson has won the bizarre California court battle for the killer’s corpse.

A woman who once ran a religious boarding school in Florida and was described as a cult leader has been charged in the 1980s death of a toddler who authorities say was tortured and denied food.

Other killers snuffed out far more lives than Charles Manson did in 1969. Yet he has endured for nearly a half century as the personification of evil, even in an age in which mass shootings leave dozens dead at a time. Manson, the hippie cult leader who died Sunday at 83, horrified America a generation ago with the way he...

Debra Tate got the call from Corcoran State Prison around 8:30 p.m. Sunday — the man who ordered the killing of her sister was dead. Debra

Parole was denied Thursday for convicted killer Patricia Krenwinkel, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson.

Powers Boothe, the character actor known for his villain roles in TV’s “Deadwood,” and in the movies “Tombstone,” ”Sin City” and “The Avengers,” has died. He was 68. Boothe’s publicist says he died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles Sunday. Beau Bridges tweeted the news and called him “a dear friend, great actor, devoted father and husband.”...

A state panel has recommended paroling a former follower of cult leader Charles Manson after California governors blocked four previous recommendations for his release.

Cult leader Charles Manson, who’s serving a life sentence at a California prison for a series of murders in the summer of 1969, has been hospitalized.