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What Happened to Charles Manson's Mother? What to Know About His Family
Charles Manson wasn't the only one in his family to serve time behind bars. His mom, Kathleen Maddox, also spent three years in a West Virginia prison when he was a child.
Enigmatic cult leader Charles Manson is best known for creating a “family” of hippies some of whom would go on to kill at his behest.
But before the bloody summer of 1969, which claimed the lives of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and others, Manson had a biological family of his own, including his mother, Kathleen Maddox.
Maddox was just a teenager herself when she gave birth to Manson and would spend years in prison during his formative years after a robbery gone wrong, paving the path for a difficult childhood for one of America’s most notorious criminals.
Who is Charles Manson’s Mom, Kathleen Maddox?
Kathleen Maddox grew up in a strict, religious household in Kentucky.
“There was a lot of rebellion as there always has been with young people growing up under fundamentalist church rules. But Charlie’s mother, Kathleen, was really the exception in that she would actually dare to put up her hair, sneak into a short dress that might leave her arms bare which was just a carnal act, and go out to dance,” biographer Jeff Guinn once shared in the docuseries Helter Skelter: An American Myth.
It was at one of these dances where Guinn — author of the book Manson: The Life and Times Of Charles Manson — contends that Maddox met Manson’s father.
Although there has been much speculation about who Manson’s father was, and no father was listed on his birth certificate, Guinn and The Los Angeles Times have identified him as a much older man by the name of Colonel Walker Henderson Scott Sr.
Maddox was just 16 when she gave birth to Manson at the Cincinnati General Hospital in 1934, according to WCPO. The baby was first listed as “no-name Maddox,” but was eventually given the surname Manson after his mother married William Manson.
“He was somebody that had apparently also met Kathleen at the dance halls,” Guinn said. “He married her and he went into the marriage well aware that his wife was pregnant with another man’s child.”
The marriage, however, was short-lived and Manson and his mother were often shuttled between relatives in his early years.
Why was Kathleen Maddox arrested?
There have been rumors that Maddox found work as a prostitute, a claim that Manson seemingly gave credence to himself in his autobiography Manson:In His Own Words.
“In later years, because of hard knocks and tough times, she may have sold her body some. I am not about to knock her," Manson wrote. "Knowing the things I know now, I wish my mother had been smart enough to start out as a prostitute. You can sit back and say, ‘A statement like that is about what is expected out of Manson’s mouth,’ but to me, a class whore is about as honest a person as there is on earth. She has a commodity that is hers alone. She asks a price for it. If the price is agreeable, the customer is happy, the girl has her rent and grocery money."
But in her own interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1971, Maddox, then referred to simply as “Mrs. Manson,” denied those claims.
"Charles was born out of wedlock,” she admitted. "but it wasn't just any man. I wasn't a prostitute, I've never been a prostitute. I was just 15 years old and a dumb kid.”
She admitted in the years that followed that she had a “tendency to be a little wild, the way kids will.”
That impulsiveness came to a head when she and her older brother, Luther, decided to rob a man they met at a club by luring him to a gas station, where they lay in wait.
“Luther shows up, he has in his possession a ketchup bottle filled with salt, which he tries to stick in the guy’s back and say, ‘This is a gun, I’ve got you covered, give me your money,’” Guinn explained in the docuseries.
The man suspected it wasn’t a real gun and began to fight back and Luther smashed the bottle over his head, robbed him, and then stole the man’s car.
The man was knocked unconscious and the daring sibling duo would later be arrested. Kathleen was sentenced to five years in prison for the robbery, while her brother got a lengthier 10-year sentence.
She served out her time at the West Virginia state prison in Moundsville. While she was behind bars, Charles lived with his grandmother, uncle, and aunt in McMechen, West Virginia and was often brought to the archaic prison to visit his mother as she sat among more hardened criminals, despite Charles’ objections.
“Charlie screams and he acts girlie and a sissy and Uncle Bill is disgusted and drags him off but on a regular basis, never wanting to go because the place was so awful,” Guinn said. “Little Charlie Manson would be taken to see his mother in that prison and every time he had a terrible reaction. He never got used to it, but then who would?”
When she was paroled after serving three years, Maddox took Charles and moved out of town. But by then, according to Guinn, he was often skipping classes and she soon sent him off to reform school.
For years, Manson bounced in and out of reform schools until he went away to prison for the first time in 1951. After serving a seven-year stint behind bars for forging a check, he was released in 1967 just as the counterculture and free love movement was picking up momentum.
Manson would capitalize on the movement that resonated with many of the country’s young people and began recruiting young women and men to travel with him as part of the Manson Family. Members of the cult would later go on to carry out a string of brutal murders allegedly at the behest of Manson, earning themselves a spot in the history books as one of the most notorious cults of all time.
What has Kathleen Maddox said about her son, Charles Manson?
Maddox has said very little publicly about her son, but in 1971, after Manson and his followers were already behind bars, she gave one interview to The Los Angeles Times.
She told the newspaper she didn’t believe his unstable childhood played a role in the later violence.
“I think it made him over-confident. He never had to take a fall, not till he was a grown man. Everything just was handed to him, I admit,” she said, according to All That’s Interesting.
Where is Kathleen Maddox today?
At the time of the interview, Maddox said she was on her third marriage and raising a young daughter, although the notoriety from Manson’s crimes had left the family virtually living in hiding.
Just two years later — on July 31, 1973 — Maddox died at the age of 55. At the time of her death, she was living in Spokane, Washington.
Learn more about Charles Manson in the three-part docuseries Making Manson, premiering on Peacock on November 19.
