Before the Manson Family, there was Kathleen Maddox – Charles Manson’s actual family.
Infamous cult leader Charles Manson’s mom, Kathleen Maddox, remains a relatively obscure figure — despite her son’s notorious legacy. Her story is complicated by conjecture and contradiction, and after Manson’s conviction, she retreated from the public eye, allowing the media to shape her narrative.
Often painted in an unflattering light, Maddox was labeled an alcoholic and a prostitute, with rumors that she sold Manson for a pint of beer. While separating fact from fiction is challenging, one common theme is that Maddox’s poor parenting contributed to Manson’s instability. Let’s explore how accurate that perception is.
Kathleen Maddox: A 1930’s Wild Child
Ada Kathleen Maddox was born on Jan. 11, 1918, in Kentucky. Known to family and friends as Kathleen, she was the youngest of five children. She had a comfortable, average, working-class upbringing in a religious household.
However, Kathleen was free-spirited and often snuck out to party with her older brother, Luther Maddox, against her family’s wishes. “I guess I had a tendency to be a little wild, the way kids will,” she admitted in a 1971 interview.
Family members reported that Maddox eventually ran away from home in Ashland, Kentucky, and worked as a prostitute. At 15, she gave birth to Charles Manson in 1934 at Cincinnati General Hospital. According to her 1971 interview, she insisted she was never a prostitute, just “a dumb kid” who gave birth out of wedlock.
Her religious mother allegedly sent her to Cincinnati to have the baby. There, she met William Manson and married him in 1934, six months pregnant, to give her child a proper name.
Records show that her child’s birth certificate listed him as “No Name Maddox.” Maddox explained she wanted to wait for her mother to arrive in Cincinnati to name the baby. “I figured I’d already hurt her pretty bad, so I wanted to let her name the baby. So she named him after my father.” Weeks later, the child was renamed Charles Miller Manson.
Maddox’s marriage to William Manson was short-lived; he was out of Charles’ life before the child could remember him. They divorced a year later, and Maddox returned to Kentucky with her mother.
Meanwhile, Charles Manson’s biological father, Colonel Walker Scott, was not entirely absent. Maddox had met Scott on one of her nights sneaking out, and he was involved in Manson’s early life until his death from cancer in 1954.
“All that stuff you read about Charles not knowing who his father was, that’s not so. Scott used to come and pick up Charles and take him home for weekends with his own child. He just loved him,” Maddox reported.
Manson seemed aware of his mother’s true nature, especially in his later years. In his book, Manson in His Own Words, he wrote, “Other writers have portrayed Mom as a teenage whore. Because she happened to be the mother of Charles Manson, she is downgraded. I prefer to think of her as a flower child in the 30s, thirty years ahead of her time.”
He added that her reasons for leaving home were no different than the 1960s kids who chose to be homeless rather than cater to their parents’ demands.
Maddox maintained her wild side, often getting into legal trouble and being separated from her son. She was arrested for hitchhiking at 16 and left Manson with her parents to go to West Virginia when he was four. Two years later, Maddox and her brother Luther were arrested for robbing a gas station with a broken ketchup bottle.
In The Absence Of A Mother
While Charles Manson’s mom was in jail, he lived with his aunt and uncle. When Maddox was released from prison three years later, she and Manson moved between various hotel rooms for several years.
According to a 2013 biography of Charles Manson by author Jeff Guinn, once Maddox was out of jail, her son had already become a petty criminal, stealing and skipping school. Unable to control his behavior, Maddox sent him to a Catholic school for delinquents when he was 12 years old.
Manson escaped from these reformatories multiple times until his final breakout in 1951, during which he stole a car and robbed a gas station, leading to his incarceration in a maximum-security prison.
The reformatories clearly didn’t help. In 1955, Manson, who had gained his freedom legally, married his first wife, 15-year-old Rosalie Jean Willis. They had a son named Charles Manson Jr. Two years later, he was sent to federal prison after stealing a car, violating his probation.
Manson was imprisoned in Washington state after driving the stolen car to California with his young wife. Maddox reportedly moved to California as well to be closer to him and his family. Maddox and Willis reportedly lived together for a time.
Years After The Violence
The rest of Kathleen Maddox’s life is even more mysterious than her early years. In a 1971 interview, the same year Manson was convicted of first-degree murder for his involvement in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders of 1969, Maddox said she was five years into her third marriage with husband Gale Bower. She had a nine-year-old daughter and lived a quiet life with few friends.
Though her unstable lifestyle is often blamed for Manson’s violence, Maddox claimed the opposite. “I think that made him over-confident. He never had to face consequences until he was a grown man. Everything was just handed to him,” she admitted.
Kathleen Maddox died on July 31, 1973, at the age of 55 in Spokane, Washington. She is buried at Fairmount Memorial Park. Charles Manson died 44 years later in prison at the age of 83.
When people think of the Manson Family, they think of the murderous cult led by Charles Manson. But once upon a time, he was no-name Maddox, and his family was his biological mother, Kathleen Maddox.
If you found this article interesting, check out where the Manson Family members are now. Then, take a look at Spahn Ranch, the deserted film set where Manson and his “family” lived in isolation. Finally, read up on Manson Family victim Abigail Folger and the question of who Charles Manson killed.