Mary Brunner - Meeting Charles Manson

Meeting Charles Manson

Born and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin to John and Evelyn Brunner, she moved to California upon graduating from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965 after receiving a job offer as a library assistant at UC Berkeley. There, she met 33-year-old career criminal Charles Manson, who had been released from Terminal Island prison for a parole violation several weeks prior to their meeting. She let Manson stay at her apartment and, after a period of weeks, the two began sleeping together. Not long after the relationship began, Manson traded a newly acquired friend's piano for a cheap Volkswagen van, Brunner quit her job, and the two began to drift around California meeting other young women.

In 1967, Brunner became pregnant by Manson and on April 15, 1968 gave birth to a son she named Valentine Michael (nicknamed "Pooh Bear") in a condemned house in Topanga Canyon and was assisted during the birth by several of the young women from the Family. Brunner (like most members of the group) acquired a number of aliases and nicknames, including: "Marioche", "Och", "Mother Mary", "Mary Manson", "Linda Dee Manson" and "Christine Marie Euchts".

After arriving in Venice, California, Brunner and Manson met 18-year-old Lynette Fromme and the three began living together in a rented house at 636 Cole Street in San Francisco. Over the course of the following two years, the Family enlarged to include between 20 and 30 individuals living communally; some, like Brunner and Fromme, became ardent followers of Manson, while others drifted in and out of the group.

After traveling along the California coast and excursions to Washington, Oregon and Nevada, the ever-growing number of young women and men eventually settled down at Spahn Ranch, an occasional film set operated by an elderly man named George Spahn, near the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth. Unemployed, the group of mostly older teenagers and young adults had much spare time on their hands at Spahn Ranch and they passed it by taking drugs and engaging in sexual orgies. The group supported itself financially by selling drugs and auto theft.