Where Are Charles Manson's Children Now? Inside the Lives of the Late Cult Leader’s 3 Known Sons

Mar. 15, 2025

Charles Manson is escorted to court for preliminary hearing on December 3, 1969 in Los Angeles, California ; Charles Manson’s son Michael Brunner.Photo:John Malmin/Los Angeles Times via Getty ; Los Angeles Times

John Malmin/Los Angeles Times via Getty ; Los Angeles Times

Charles Mansonhad a well-known “Manson Family” cult of followers, but his biological family has long flown under the radar.

Before orchestrating the brutal murders of then-pregnantSharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca across two nights in August 1969, Manson fathered three sons with three different women — one of whom was one of his first followers.

Manson’s two elder sons, Charles Manson Jr. (who later changed his name to Jay White to distance himself from his father) and Charles Luther Manson (who legally changed his name to Jay Charles Warner), were born about a decade before the slayings thatshook Hollywood, while his youngest, Michael Brunner, was born only 14 months before the murders.

Manson —who diedat age 83 ofnatural causesin prison on Nov. 19, 2017 — rarely spoke publicly about his kids, but over the years, details have come to light about familial connections.

A new Netflix documentary about the crimes,Chaos: The Manson Murders, began streaming in March 2025 and explores a theory thatManson had a connection to the CIAand MKUltra.

Here’s everything to know about Charles Manson’s children: Charles Manson Jr., Charles Luther Manson and Michael Brunner.

Charles Manson Jr.

According toThe New York Times, Manson and Willis married in 1955 and eventually divorced. (She later died of lung cancer in 2009.)

Manson Jr. has a surviving adult son, Jason Freeman. When Manson died in 2017, a judge ruled that Freeman was Manson’s grandson and awarded him Manson’s body,The Northwest Florida Daily Newsreported. At the same time, a battle for Manson’s estate began and is still ongoing several years later, according to theDaily Mail.

Freeman, a former kickboxer and cage fighter, told CNN in 2012 that he never knew his father growing up but sympathized with what he may have been going through. “He just couldn’t let it go … He couldn’t live down who his father was,” he said of Manson Jr.’s death.

Charles Manson during his trial in an undated photo.AP

As for Freeman’s relationship with Manson, the two didn’t meet in person, but Freeman claimed he occasionally spoke to his grandfather on the phone as an adult. (PEOPLE was previously unable to verify Freeman’s claims.)

“From time to time, every now and then, he’d say ‘I love you,’ " he toldThe Northwest Florida Daily News.“He’d say it back to me. Maybe a couple times he said it first. It took a while to get to that point though, trust me.”

In 2019, Freeman, who at the time lived in Bradenton, Fla.,toldThe State Journal-Registerthat he enjoyedQuentin Tarantino’sOnce Upon a Time…In Hollywood, which sees the attempted Manson murders ultimately have a happy ending.

Freeman told PEOPLE in 2017 that his grandfather didn’t order his followers to kill and “his hands are clean.” (Manson did not physically commit the murders during the August 1969 killing spree, but he was found legally responsible for them.)

Charles Luther Manson

Little is known about Manson’s second-born son, Charles Luther Manson. His mother was Leona Rae Musser, known as “Candy Stevens,“The Las Cruces Bulletinreported.

Initially, Musser lied in a court proceeding when Manson was sentenced to 10 years in prison for using a stolen check and said she was pregnant with his child to elicit pity from the judge. She did, in fact, get pregnant several months later, in December 1959, and the pair got married.

Charles Luther was born on Sept. 24, 1960, according toThe Las Cruces Bulletin. He never knew his father, whom Leona divorced nearly three years later.

Charles Manson poses for a photo on March 18, 2009 at Corcoran State Prison, California.California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via Getty

Manson wrote in a letter to his pen pal Michael Channels in 2002, “Leona Manson [Candy Stevens] had a son Charles Manson Jr. in Denver, Colorado. I wondered about him.”

He continued, “We got a blood test and papers but never got married — She just forged the papers and filed divorce and got custody of my son.”

Charles Luther legally changed his name to Jay Charles Warner in 1976 and died in 2007 in Colorado, perThe Las Cruces Bulletin.

Michael Brunner

Charles Manson’s son Michael Brunner.Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

Born Valentine Michael Manson in 1968, Brunner is Manson’s son with Mary Theresa Brunner, who theLos Angeles Timesreportedwas one of the first members of the Manson “family” cult.

Michael’s maternal grandparents, Elsie and George Brunner, raised him as their own son in Eau Claire, Wis., and officially adopted Michael in 1976. Noting that he was “loved,” Michael said his adoption celebration was like having an “extra birthday” and explained why the Brunners changed his last name.

“I think they wanted to get rid of the Manson name because of school and to make me a little more normal,” Michael told theLos Angeles Times. “So I wasn’t being pestered or bullied or that sort of thing, which didn’t happen much.”

Michael recalled his upbringing as mostly normal and spending most of his time playing sports (he particularly loved skiing, skating and biking). Still, he faced some confusion as a child about his family relationships: Because his grandparents adopted him, his birth mother was legally his sister.

Charles Manson walking to a courtroom.

Michael didn’t know or communicate with Manson during his childhood and ignored his birth father’s attempts to contact him from prison. Michael joined the Army when he graduated high school, then worked as a military contractor in Afghanistan, at which point he reached out to his father via email for the first and only time.

Manson replied with a postcard to Michael’s home encouraging his son to write back to him, but Michael never got around to it before Manson died in 2017, explaining, “Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. And I just never did it. And then it was too late.”

Michael told theLos Angeles Timesthat he didn’t look further into his father’s crimes until after Manson’s death, noting that he doesn’t believe the “Helter Skelter” theory that he led his cult followers to murder as part of a conspiracy to start a race war.

He explained that after discovering Nikolas Schreck’s writing and documentary about the Manson murders, he believed that “[Charles Manson was] a criminal for sure, but not this evil incarnate cartoon character that the media and the courts and now the public have believed in as the scapegoat.”

Today, Michael keeps a low profile. He works in manufacturing, has an adult son and lives with his partner on a 56-acre property in the Midwest, wherethey grow some of their own crops.According toLos Angeles Daily News, Brunner was legally removed from a list of potential heirs for Manson’s estate in 2018 because he was adopted.

source: people.com