The Region - News from Jan. 28, 1987

“I’ve never killed anyone,” mass murderer Charles Manson declared, but he added: “Maybe I should have killed 400 or 500 people. Then I would have felt better.” In an interview conducted Jan. 9 at San Quentin Prison and shown on NBC’s “Today” television show, Manson, 53, alternated from lucidity to incoherence, periodically babbling nonsensical syllables and threatening the interviewer. “There’s no need to feel guilty. I haven’t done anything I’m ashamed of,” he said. “Maybe I haven’t done enough. I might be ashamed of that, for not doing enough, for not giving enough, for not being more perceptive, for not being aware enough, for not understanding, for being stupid.” Manson was dressed in prison blues with a Nazi swastika scar on his forehead and tattoos covering both arms. He was the leader of a drug and sex cult that shocked the nation with the killings of actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles in August, 1969. He is serving a life term.