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Killer Cult: Charles Manson Follower Patricia Krenwinkel Gives First On-Camera Interview And Explains Why She Murdered Innocent People

//charles manson

Aug. 5 2014, Published 12:50 p.m. ET

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One of Charles Mansons’ cult members has given a first-ever on-camera interview to explain why she committed her atrocious acts.

Patricia Krenwinkel, 63, is serving a life sentence in California’s Institution for Women for murdering innocent people on behalf of the cult leader. She said she did it because she was a “coward” and “wanted to feel loved.”

But those aren’t the only reasons the convicted killer listed. Krenwinkel also attributed her rough childhood as a reason, saying it made it easier to fall under Mansons’ spell.

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“As I started to go to school I never felt like I had fitted in, I never had that sense of belonging,” she said. “I stared losing contact with friends and I dropped out of college and I went to live with my sister.”

“I was killing for a way out,” she confessed. “I found myself thinking there has to be more.

“I never ever developed a sense of who I was and where I was going and what I wanted to do.” She added.

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Krenwinkel met Manson in Manhattan Beach, Calif. in 1967 when she was just 20-years-old. She also met fellow followers Lynette Fromme and Mary Brunner.

“I wanted to please, I wanted to love, I wanted for the first time to feel safe. I wanted to feel like someone was going to care for me because I hadn't felt that from anywhere else in my life,” she said.

Denied parole several times, Krenwinkel is one of Manson’s two surviving female followers. She is the longest-incarcerated female prisoner in the California penal system.

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Two years after meeting them, Manson and his “Family” slaughtered Sharon Tate, the actress wife of Roman Polanski, who was eight and a half months pregnant at the time. They also killed three of her friends in her Beverly Hills home.

She was 22 when she was arrested in Mobile, Alabama in 1969.

Image of a woman with shocked expression

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