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Watson did as he was told. He dragged Leno LaBianca into the living-room, stabbed him to death and left the knife sticking out of his throat. Meanwhile, Van Houten and Krenwinkel stabbed the helpless Mrs LaBianca as they chanted a murderous mantra. They used their victim’s blood to write more revolutionary slogans on the walls. Then the three killers took a shower together.

The killers thought of their senseless slayings as a joke. They also expected them to set off ‘helter skelter’, the great revolutionary race war. When it did not, they knew they were in danger and the Family began to break up.

Susan Atkins turned back to prostitution to support herself. She was arrested and, in prison, she boasted to another inmate about the killings. When the police questioned her, she blamed Manson.

On 15 October 1969, Manson was arrested and charged with murder. Basking in publicity, Manson portrayed himself as the baddest man on Earth and boasted that he had been responsible for 35 other murders. But at his trial he pointed out a simple truth.

‘I’ve killed no one,’ he told the jury. ‘I’ve ordered no one to be killed. These children who come to you with their knives, they’re your children. I didn’t teach them – you did.’

It did not make any difference. He, Beausoleil, Atkins, Krenwinkel, Van Houten, Watson and Grogan were all sentenced to death in the gas chamber. But before the sentence could be carried out, the death penalty was abolished in California. Manson and his followers had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment and they are now eligible for parole. So far, only Steven Grogan has been granted it.

Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel have all got skilful lawyers working on legal loopholes. Susan Atkins became a born-again Christian and like Leslie Van Houten she became a model prisoner, although she was denied parole for the eleventh time in 2005. At the California Institute for Women in Frontera, Van Houten, who was denied parole in 2004, graduated with degrees in literature and psychology. She could also argue that she did not actually kill anybody. She stabbed Mrs LaBianca, but only after she was dead. Even Vincent Bugliosi conceded that the three women will be released eventually.

Tex Watson has less of a chance. He was doing well when he found God and became assistant pastor at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo. But he made Bruce Davis, another Family member, as his assistant, and Kay suspected he was trying to build himself a powerbase in prison. Watson was denied parole in 2005 and is now working, inside, as a motor mechanic.

Former Family member Lynette Fromme made a half-hearted attempt to get Manson out in 1975 when she pulled a gun on US President Gerald Ford. But she did not pull the trigger and succeeded only in putting Manson back in the headlines again.

Manson constantly asks for parole. He does it, not because he has a reasonable chance of getting out, but because it gains him publicity. He revels in his image as the ‘baddest man on Earth’.

Stephen Kay, a Los Angeles County district attorney who worked as Vincent Bugliosi’s assistant during the trial, keeps an eye on the parole hearings and turns up to oppose any release. In 1981, at a parole hearing, Manson said that Kay would be murdered in the car park as he left. But he was present again, alive and well, for the next parole board hearing.

The following year, Manson was transferred to a maximum security cell at Vacaville prison after the authorities learned he was planning an escape by hot-air balloon. A ballooning catalogue, a rope, a hacksaw and a container of flammable liquid were found in the jail.

At one parole board hearing, Manson was asked why he unravelled his socks and used the yarn to make into woollen scorpions. He rose from his seat and said quite seriously: ‘From the world of darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment.’

Parole was refused.

In 1986, Manson’s parole request was opposed by California’s governor