“I didn’t actually meet Charles Manson, but I was close as I am to you to Charles Manson.”
Following the death of former cult leader and killer Charles Manson, actor Bryan Cranston has described his own brief encounter with one of the most notorious figures in the history of American crime back in 1968.
A year before the Tate murders – in which Manson led a group of his followers to kill the actress Sharon Tate and four other people in her home on 9 August, 1969 – Cranston describes how he and his cousin went horseback riding and came across “the little man with crazy eyes whom the other hippies called Charlie.”
Hearing Charles Manson is dead, I shuddered. I was within his grasp just one year before he committed brutal murder in 1969. Luck was with me when a cousin and I went horseback riding at the Span Ranch, and saw the little man with crazy eyes whom the other hippies called Charlie.
— Bryan Cranston (@BryanCranston) November 20, 2017
In a talk last year, Cranston described the story in far more detail.
Cranston was only 11 or 12 at the time but recalls his encounter with Manson. The future star of Breaking Bad was out horseback riding on the Span Ranch in the San Fernando Valley when all hell broke loose, as a number of men in horseback gathered to meet a man with “big, dark eyes and wild hair.”
Cranston and his cousin would pass just inches from Manson, who would commit the crimes with which he became synonymous just a year later.
To watch the full clip, click here.
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