Crimes Of Obedience

Manson Family

         “Susan admitted: ‘He represented a God to me that was so beautiful that I’d do anything for him.’

            ‘Even commit murder?’  I asked instantly.

            ‘I’d do anything for God.’

            ‘Including murder?’ I pressed.

            ‘That’s right.  If I believed it was right.’”

     In August 1969 a series of vicious and senseless murders in the Los Angeles, California area caught the attention of the entire country.  Five people were murdered in an upscale neighborhood on August 9^th, and two more were murdered the next night.  Small pieces of highly circumstantial evidence led to a group of young men and women who identified themselves as “the family” and their leader, Charles Manson.   The prosecutor assigned to the case, Vincent Bugliosi, spend hundreds of hours devoted to developing an understanding of how one man could have such control over the thoughts, attitudes, and actions of others. 

 

“Yes, Tex, Sadie, Katie, and Leslie were robots, zombies, automatons.  No question about it.  But only in the sense that they were totally subservient and obsequious and servile to Charles Manson.  Only in that sense …….. The fact that these three female defendants obeyed Charles Manson and did whatever he told them to do does not immunize them from a conviction of first degree murder.  It offers no insulation, no protection whatsoever.  If it did, then hired killers or trigger men for the mafia would have a built-in defense for murder.  All they would have to say is: ‘Well, I did what my boss told me to do.’”

- Vincent Bugliosi

While still able to establish that his followers were equally as culpable for the crimes as Manson himself, Bugliosi successfully convinced a jury of Manson’s control over them and of the techniques he used to get others to, literally, kill for him.

The incredibly meticulous and lengthy process is recorded in Bugliosi’s novel Helter Skelter.

The Holocaust

“Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think.”

- Adolf Eichmann
 

           One of the most extreme cases of crimes of obedience is that which is seen in the Holocaust.  Carrying out the demands of higher authority resulted in the murders of literally millions and millions of innocent people.  I am not going to even start to try to sum up the Holocaust because it would, one, be impossible, and two, wouldn’t do the horrific events justice.

          After the end of the war, the Nuremburg Trials began.  Adolf Eichmann was a war criminal on trial for crimes against the jewish people and crimes against humanity.  Eichmann brought forth a point during these trials and an interesting question surfaced – Could Adolf Eichmann be considered simple an accomplice, as he claimed he was, because he was “just following orders”? 

         Eichmann was found guilty and was hanged in Jerusalem, yet his defense remained on the minds of some around the world.