The new Chaos: The Manson Murders documentary on Netflix—which began streaming today— is proof that even over 50 years later, audiences will never tire of the gruesome tale of Charles Manson and his cult of killers.
Directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris, who also produced the film with Robert Fernandez and Steven Hathaway, this documentary is an adaptation of the 2019 nonfiction book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, written by Tom O’Neill with Dan Piepenbring. Author O’Neill is featured prominently in the documentary, and presents a new theory on the Tate–LaBianca murders, committed by the Manson Family—aka Manson’s cult of young followers, mostly young women, who killed seven people, including actress Sharon Tate—in 1969.
Though he’s upfront about the fact that he’s unable to prove it, O’Neill suggests that, based on evidence he uncovered, Manson may have been part of a larger, secret CIA initiative.
Morris remains skeptical of O’Neill’s theory, but allows him to lay out his argument that Manson may have been a puppet for a CIA mind control project.
Who is Dr. Jolly West from Chaos: The Manson Murders?
Basically, O’Neill explains, there was a famous psychologist, hypnotist, and “brainwashing” expert, named Dr. Louis “Jolly” West, who may have had contact with Manson. O’Neill admits he has no concrete evidence the two men were in the same room at the same time.
However, it is known that Jolly West used the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in Northern California—the very same medical clinic where Manson frequently came in to get his girls treated for venereal disease and unwanted pregnancies—to recruit young, free-spirited subjects for experiments using LSD on youth for “mind control.” West was part of the secretive CIA project on mind control known as Project MKUltra.
What is MK Ultra from Chaos: The Manson Murders?
Project MKUltra is CIA initiative started in 1953 and halted in 1973, intended to use drugs and “mind control” to create “programmed assassins” who would kill without question. This project involved testing LSD on unwilling test subjects, and was obviously highly unethical. As a result, the records of the project were destroyed in 1973 to avoid criminal charges, and we still don’t know the scope, or the results, of this initiative.
But in the documentary, O’Neill says he found proof via documentation that Jolly West “worked for the CIA for about 15 years and lied about it.” O’Neill goes onto to say that the documents he uncovered “describe pretty horrific experiments,” including drugging unwilling subjects, implanting false information, and deliberately inducing mental disorders.
O’Neill makes it clear that he doesn’t have proof that West was performing these experiments for the CIA at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. But he does know that both West and Manson visited the clinic often. And, he adds, he knows that Manson’s parole officer, Roger Smith, asked Manson to have his parole meetings at the clinic.
What goes unsaid, but what is implied: West and other CIA operatives could have been meeting with Manson, and perhaps even used him as a puppet to drug his young followers with LSD, and convince them to commit murders on his behalf. In exchange, Manson’s parole officer let his continued criminal behavior slide.
“For one year, while [Smith] was Manson’s parole officer, Manson was arrested half a dozen times,” O’Neill says in the documentary. “Every time he was arrested, instead revoking his parole, Smith would write him a letter saying he was behaving well, he was doing great, he was fine.” (Manson had previously been imprisoned twice for rape, assault, and other federal crimes, but was released from prison on parole in 1967.)
“Learning how to induce insanity into someone without their knowledge was a CIA objective of MKUltra,” O’Neill said. “Manson emerged at the Haight Ashbury at the end of 1967, at the same time West left, as exactly what they were trying to create—those girls. People who would kill, on command, without remorse, who would do whatever they were told to do. That group left and went down to LA, and then a year later, committed these horrific crimes.”
Again, O’Neill makes clear there is no concrete proof. But it’s an interesting theory, and one that pushes back on the widely accepted theory that Manson wanted to “start a race war,” and that this violence was just the inevitable end game of the drugged up, hippie movement.
O’Neill argues the story that followed the Manson trial was “managed and manipulated” to be a cautionary tale of a youth corrupted by the ’60s ideology. “Don’t let your kids do drugs, don’t let them join communes, don’t let them march against the war, because they are all going to turn into these crazed killers.”
At the end of the film, Errol Morris outright tells O’Neill that he doesn’t buy into this theory. O’Neill agrees with Morris that there is no clear resolution to the Manson story. “That’s why the book’s called Chaos,” he says. “It’s chaotic. There are so many threads.”
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