<P> For some time, Manson had been saying that racial tension between blacks and whites was growing and that blacks would soon rise up in rebellion in America's cities . He had emphasized Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, which had taken place on April 4, 1968 . On a bitterly cold New Year's Eve at Myers Ranch, the Family members gathered outside around a large fire, listening as Manson explained that the social turmoil he had been predicting had also been predicted by the Beatles . The White Album songs, he declared, told it all, although in code . In fact, he maintained (or would soon maintain), the album was directed at the Family, an elect group that was being instructed to preserve the worthy from the impending disaster . </P> <P> In early January 1969, the Family escaped the desert's cold and positioned itself to monitor L.A.'s supposed tensions by moving to a canary - yellow home in Canoga Park, not far from the Spahn Ranch . Because this locale would allow the group to remain "submerged beneath the awareness of the outside world", Manson called it the Yellow Submarine, another Beatles reference . There, Family members prepared for the impending apocalypse, which around the campfire Manson had termed "Helter Skelter", after the song of that name . </P> <P> By February, Manson's vision was complete . The Family would create an album whose songs, as subtle as those of the Beatles, would trigger the predicted chaos . Ghastly murders of whites by blacks would be met with retaliation, and a split between racist and non-racist whites would yield whites' self - annihilation . Blacks' triumph, as it were, would merely precede their being ruled by the Family, which would ride out the conflict in "the bottomless pit", a secret city beneath Death Valley . At the Canoga Park house, while Family members worked on vehicles and pored over maps to prepare for their desert escape, they also worked on songs for their world - changing album . When they were told Terry Melcher was to come to the house to hear the material, the women prepared a meal and cleaned the place, but Melcher never arrived . </P> <P> There are alternative theories to the Helter Skelter scenario and whether or not it was the actual motive behind the murders . According to Manson Family associate Bobby Beausoleil, it was actually Beausoleil's arrest for the torture and murder of Gary Hinman that instigated the Manson Family's ensuing murder spree--enacted to convince police that the killer (s) of Gary Hinman were in fact still at large . This has been substantiated by interviews of Beausoleil by Truman Capote, and by Ann Louise Bardach in 1981 . </P>

Who were the members of the manson family