Fight to inherit Charles Manson's estate takes a new turn

The seven-year battle over Charles Manson's $1 million estate dragged on at a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday, with a judge kicking the can down the road yet again.

Three men are fighting to inherit the killer's belongings and art - plus the lucrative rights to his music and writings.

Jason Freeman, 48, a former mixed martial arts fighter from Bradenton, FL claims he is Manson's grandson. LA realtor Daniel Arguelles, 64, insists he's Manson's son. 

While memorabilia collector Michael Channels, 57, has a Manson will he claims leaves everything to him and disinherits his children and other relatives.

At a hearing on Wednesday, LA Superior Court Judge Ruben Garcia granted Arguelles' motion to 'bifurcate' his part of the case - meaning that he gets an individual mini-trial where the court will determine if he is actually a Manson heir, before he goes up against Freeman and Channels in a main trial.

The judge scheduled a 'trial setting conference' for February 21 next year to determine when the bifurcation trial will be held.

Judge Garcia was also supposed to rule on the authenticity of the two-page will. 

But instead, he continued the 'contest of will' hearing to the same February 21 court date.

The purported will - which both Freeman and Arguelles brand as fake - is typed except for a hand-written note at the end that includes the words, 'I'm not in the best spot to rest in peace.'

The document - which Channels claims is signed by Manson - also states, 'I have disinherited both known sons and any unknown children in the present and in the future.'

Channels, from Newhall, CA, says he became friends and pen pals with Manson in the 90s. 

After visiting him in Corcoran State Prison, CA in 2002, America's most hated murderer wrote a will leaving him everything he owned, including rights to his music, art and writings, he alleges.

Freeman has attacked Channels' claim saying that the 'will' was obtained as 'a direct result of undue influence exercised by Channels over Manson and is not, and never was, the will of Manson.'

Arguelles - who says he's Manson's love child and sole heir - also blasted Channels' so-called will, saying the signature of Manson is forged and accusing Channels of witnessing the will with his own signature two days before Manson allegedly signed it.

In addition, Arguelles has accused Channels of using 'duress, menace, fraud or undue influence' to get the will from Manson who had mental issues, including schizophrenia and paranoid delusional disorder, according to a 1997 parole hearing.

Two years ago, the contest to inherit Manson's estate was only a two-horse race with Freeman looking like the front-runner over Channels.

But in August 2022, on the eve of a court hearing Freeman was confident he'd win, Arguelles, stepped into the fray, filing 11th-hour legal papers saying he's the mass murderer's 'biological son', thanks to a one-night stand his mother had with Manson back in 1959.

In his court petition, Arguelles said, 'There is clear and convincing evidence that he is the biological son' of Manson and he is 'entitled to an equal share' of Manson's estate.

Judge Garcia decided in 2022 that he was satisfied Freeman is the son of Charles Manson Junior, based on an Ohio court's 1986 finding that Manson Jr. was ordered to pay child support to Freeman's mother.

But the judge said he still needed proof that Manson Jr. - who committed suicide in 1993 - was actually the offspring of Manson Senior, leader of the cult that killed eight-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in a brutal and bloody rampage through LA in 1969.

Lawyers supporting Freeman's claim later produced what the judge was asking for - Manson Jr.'s birth certificate that they said proves his father was the infamous criminal.

The birth certificate states that Manson Jr. was born April 10 1956 in Los Angeles to Manson Sr., then 21, and 18 year-old Rosalie Jean Willis.

Charles Manson died of natural causes on November 19 2017 at Corcoran State Prison where he spent 47 years on death row.

Some of Manson's belonging - like his guitars, clothes and other personal jailhouse property that currently sits in boxes at a storage facility - could fetch thousands, perhaps more, from collectors who get a kick out of owning something once handled by a mass-murderer.

But likely worth more - up to $1 million according to some estimates - are the rights to his art, journals and stories and the royalties on the songs he wrote, including Look at Your Game, Girl which was recorded by Guns 'n Roses on their platinum 1993 album The Spaghetti Incident.

The Beach Boys and Marilyn Manson also recorded songs written by Manson.

In 2018, claimant Channels filed a court motion demanding that Freeman submit to a DNA test to prove he's related to Charlie Manson Sr.

The judge in the case at that time granted the motion - but Freeman appealed and the CA Court of Appeals overturned the judge's ruling so Freeman never underwent a DNA test.

Freeman's case stating he's sole heir to Manson's estate was supported by a March 2018 court decision in Kern County - where Corcoran State Prison is located - that awarded him possession of his 'grandfather's' corpse.

Kern County Commissioner Alisa Knight, in Bakersfield - 100 miles north of LA - ruled: 'Freeman is hereby determined to be the surviving competent next of kin of (Charles Manson). 

'No sufficient probative evidence was provided to the court to refute Freeman's claim.'

Five days later, Freeman was one of the speakers at a memorial service at a funeral home in Porterville, 50 miles north of Bakersfield, where some 30 people - including Manson's ex-fiancé Afton Burton and former Manson Family cult member Sandra Good - filed past the open coffin.

Manson - whose body had been in cold storage since his death at age 83 - was cremated the same day and America's most feared and despised killer's ashes were strewn along a creek bed in a nearby forest.