Cult leader Charles Manson dies at 83

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Charles Manson, the wild-eyed cult leader who orchestrated a string of gruesome killings in Southern California by his "family" of young followers, shattering the peace-and-love ethos of the late 1960s, died on Sunday, prison officials said.

He was 83.

Manson died of natural causes at a Kern County hospital, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.

It gave no further details of the circumstances surrounding his death.

Convicted murderer Charles Manson is shown in this handout image released March 18, 2009, from Corcoran State Prison in California. /Reuters Photo

He had been serving a life sentence at the nearby Corcoran State Prison for ordering the murders of nine people, including actress Sharon Tate.

Long after Manson had largely faded from headlines, he loomed large as a symbol of the terror he unleashed in the summer of 1969.

"The very name Manson has become a metaphor for evil," the late Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Manson, told the Los Angeles Times in 1994.

A recent photograph showed the gray-bearded killer's face still bearing the scar of a swastika he carved into his forehead decades earlier.

Manson became one of the 20th century's most notorious criminals when he directed his mostly young, female followers to murder seven people in what prosecutors said was part of a plan to incite a race war.

(Top image: File photo)

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Source(s): Reuters