Charles Manson
He died in a Bakersfield hospital in 2017. A claimed son, a claimed grandson, and a memorabilia collector holding a two-page will all filed for the body. It sat in the county morgue for four months while a court sorted out who ranked highest. The estate case is still going.
Charles Manson died on November 19, 2017, at a hospital in Bakersfield, California, at 83. He was an inmate of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, serving a life sentence for the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders. That sentence is the last we will say about the crimes; this page is about the paperwork.
There was almost none of it. No funeral plan. No written direction about disposition. No acknowledged next of kin on file. No undisputed will. There was a body in a Kern County morgue and, within days, three separate people asking a court to hand it over.
It stayed there for four months.
Three claimants, one refrigerator
The petitions in Kern County Superior Court came from very different directions.
Jason Freeman, then in his forties and living in Bradenton, Florida, said he was Manson's grandson — the son of Charles Manson Jr., who died in 1993. Michael Brunner said he was Manson's biological son; he had been adopted as a child by his maternal grandparents. Michael Channels, a memorabilia collector and longtime correspondent, said he held Manson's last will: a two-page document dated February 14, 2002, naming Channels as executor and sole beneficiary and disinheriting family. A fourth man, Matthew Lentz, also asserted he was a son.
On March 12, 2018, Kern County Superior Court Commissioner Alisa Knight ruled for Freeman, finding him the surviving competent adult next of kin. Brunner's claim was reported to have foundered on his adoption, which had cut the inheritance line to his biological father. Channels's will did not carry the disposition question.
Freeman collected the remains. On March 17, 2018, roughly two dozen people attended a Christian funeral service at a funeral home in Porterville, California. The body was cremated and the ashes scattered.
The witness who was also the sole beneficiary
The estate proceeding moved to Los Angeles Superior Court, and it is a different animal. The body was a yes-or-no question resolved in four months. The estate has been in litigation since 2017.
The asset is not cash. It is copyright and notoriety: song rights — including the composition recorded by Guns N' Roses as Look at Your Game, Girl — plus artwork, guitars, letters, clothing, and photographs, the kind of material with a real and unpleasant secondary market. Reporting has put the value somewhere between several hundred thousand dollars and about $1 million, which in this field means nobody knows.
Channels petitioned to probate the 2002 will. Freeman and Daniel Arguelles, a Los Angeles man who asserts he is Manson's son, both objected, on separate tracks. Arguelles has alleged the signature does not match authenticated Manson signatures. Freeman has filed papers alleging the document was the product of undue influence and was never Manson's will.
Then there is the structural point that makes estate lawyers wince. California requires two witnesses to a will — and on this document, according to the objections filed, Channels signed as one of the two witnesses to the will that leaves him everything. California treats a gift to a subscribing witness as presumptively procured by duress, menace, fraud, or undue influence, which leaves the beneficiary having to prove the opposite.
Nine years, several judges, and a DNA question
The case has outlived multiple judges. By late 2024 it was before Los Angeles County Judge Ruben Garcia, who granted Arguelles's request to bifurcate — to try whether Arguelles is Manson's son before reaching the main fight over the will. A trial-setting conference on that question was reported for February 21, 2025.
Brunner withdrew. Lentz was ordered to show cause why he should not be dismissed after failing to appear on time. A half-sister filed to administer the estate and later dropped the bid.
As of August 2026, no final public ruling on the validity of the 2002 will has been reported. The estate is heading toward a decade in probate over an asset nobody can price, contested by people whose relationship to the decedent is itself the thing being litigated.
Hold the two proceedings side by side. The disposition question had a statutory hierarchy, a single decision, and a four-month clock. The property question has four possible answers and no clock at all. Same decedent, same absence of planning, wildly different velocities.
Timeline
- Feb 14, 2002A two-page document later filed as Manson's will is dated. It names Michael Channels executor and sole beneficiary and disinherits family.
- Nov 19, 2017Manson dies at a Bakersfield hospital at 83. The Kern County coroner takes custody of the body.
- Nov–Dec 2017Competing petitions for the remains are filed by Jason Freeman, Michael Brunner, and Michael Channels. Matthew Lentz also asserts a claim as a son.
- Mar 12, 2018Commissioner Alisa Knight rules Freeman is the surviving competent adult next of kin and may direct the disposition.
- Mar 17, 2018A funeral service is held in Porterville, California. The body is cremated and the ashes scattered.
- 2018The estate contest continues in Los Angeles Superior Court. Brunner withdraws; Lentz is ordered to show cause why he should not be dismissed.
- Late 2024Judge Ruben Garcia grants Daniel Arguelles's request to bifurcate the question of whether he is Manson's son.
- Feb 21, 2025A trial-setting conference on the Arguelles paternity question is reported.
- Aug 2026No final public ruling on the 2002 will. The estate case remains open.
What actually went wrong
- No written disposition directions. One signed page delivered to a funeral provider would have ended the body question in a day. Without it, four claimants had to be ranked by a court, and the remains waited four months.
- A will witnessed by the person it benefits. Whatever this document turns out to be, having the sole beneficiary sign as a subscribing witness guarantees a contest and hands the objectors their opening paragraph.
- Paternity never resolved in life. Two men claim to be sons; one claims to be a grandson. None of it was established while the decedent was alive and could be asked, so it now has to be proved by DNA and documents nine years later.
- Two proceedings, two counties, no coordination. The remains were fought over in Kern County and the property in Los Angeles, on separate schedules, before different judges, by overlapping parties.
- An estate made of intangibles. Copyrights and collectible ephemera have no clean market price, so there is no number that makes settlement obvious. That is a large part of why this one has lasted.
Would it have gone that way in Florida?
The body would likely have gone the same way — unless a sibling had spoken up. The will would fail or survive for entirely different reasons than in California.
Florida splits this into two questions and answers them with two different lists. That is the most useful thing this case has to offer a Florida reader.
The body. Fla. Stat. §497.005 defines the “legally authorized person” who may direct disposition of remains, in a strict order: the decedent's own written inter vivos directions first, then a military DD Form 93 designee, then the surviving spouse, then an adult son or daughter, then a parent, then an adult brother or sister, then an adult grandchild, then a grandparent, then the next degree of kinship. Manson left no written directions, no spouse, no undisputed child, and no living parent. A grandchild sits high enough on that list to have taken it — the California result.
But read the order again. In Florida a sibling outranks a grandchild for this purpose. Manson had a half-sister, who in the real case filed in the estate and then withdrew. Had this been Florida and had she asserted the disposition right, she would have outranked the grandson under §497.005, and the man who conducted the funeral would have had no standing at all. Notice what is not on that list anywhere: a pen pal holding a will. In Florida, a will is not the instrument that controls a body.
The money — and here the two lists invert. For intestate succession, Fla. Stat. §732.103 runs descendants first, then parents, then siblings. A grandchild is a descendant and takes ahead of any sibling. Under §732.105, half-blood kindred inherit half the share of whole-blood kindred of the same degree. So Florida would hand the remains to a sibling over a grandchild, and the estate to the grandchild over a sibling. Two hierarchies, one family, opposite answers.
The will, and the interested-witness trap that isn't one here. Florida diverges sharply from California. Fla. Stat. §732.504(2) says a will is not invalid because it was signed by an interested witness. A Florida beneficiary may witness the will that benefits them, and neither the will nor the gift is void for it. No presumption of duress attaches to that fact alone.
That does not mean the document would sail through. §732.5165 voids any will procured by fraud, duress, mistake, or undue influence. §733.107(2) provides that once the presumption of undue influence arises, the burden of proof shifts to the will's proponent. And under In re Estate of Carpenter, 253 So. 2d 697 (Fla. 1971), that presumption arises where a substantial beneficiary occupied a confidential relationship with the decedent and actively procured the will — with the beneficiary's presence at execution and involvement in obtaining witnesses among the classic active-procurement factors. Signing as a witness to your own bequest is not fatal in Florida. It is simply excellent evidence for the other side.
The paternity claims would also run differently. §732.108(2) makes a person born out of wedlock a descendant of the father only if the natural parents participated in a marriage ceremony, paternity is established by adjudication before or after the father's death, or the father acknowledged paternity in writing. A DNA result is powerful evidence in such an adjudication; it is not, by itself, the statutory test. And under §732.108(1), adoption generally makes the adopted person a descendant of the adopting parent and severs the line to the natural parent — the same rule that reportedly ended Brunner's claim in California.
The instruction: if you care what happens to your body, sign a standalone disposition directive and give it to a funeral provider — it sits above every relative on the §497.005 list. And although Florida permits a beneficiary to witness your will, do not let one. Two neutral witnesses cost nothing and delete the first sentence of any future contest.
What people ask us about this.
Further reading
Third-party sites. Not ours, not endorsed, not kept current by us — just the places worth going next.
Sources
- Charles Manson's grandson wins bizarre battle over cult leader's body — CBS News, Mar 2018
- Charles Manson grandson wins legal battle over cult leader's body — NPR, Mar 2018
- Judge decides grandson will get Charles Manson's body — CNN, Mar 2018
- Charles Manson's body will go to his grandson, judge rules — NBC News, Mar 2018
- Charles Manson's remains cremated after funeral in Porterville — ABC30 Fresno, Mar 2018
- California legal battle over Charles Manson's estate worth up to $1M includes DNA tests, signature comparisons — Fox News
- Charles Manson's purported sons could be out of estate fight — Legal News / AP
- Battle over Charles Manson's $1M estate takes new turn as judge grants son mini-trial — Cult Education Institute archive
- Fla. Stat. §732.504 — Who may witness — The Florida Senate
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Nearly every case in this archive turned on something ordinary — an unwitnessed page, a stale beneficiary line, a document nobody could find. Those are cheap to fix while you're alive and expensive to fix afterward.