Attorney produces Manson Jr.’s birth certificate in estate litigation

An attorney representing the temporary special administrator of Charles Manson’s estate has filed what he says is the birth certificate of Charles Manson Jr. and supplies proof he is the son of the late cult leader in the latest turn regarding who will permanently oversee the estate.

Lawyer Alan Davis filed the document Tuesday in response to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ruben Garcia’s June 17 finding that while he believes 45-year-old Jason Freeman of Bradenton, Florida, is Manson Jr.’s son and a potential heir to the elder Manson, more litigation was needed to determine whether Manson Jr. was indeed the infamous criminal’s offspring.

The birth certificate produced by Davis and obtained from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office states that Manson Jr. was born April 10, 1956, in what was then known as Los Angeles County General Hospital to Manson Sr., then 21, and Rosalie Jean Willis, who was 18 years old at the time.

Davis represents Dale Kiken, a lawyer and the current temporary special administrator of the Manson estate. Kiken is advocating for Freeman’s kinship claim, which is being challenged by a former Manson pen pal as well as Manson’s professed sister.

Manson Jr. was also named Charles Jay White and he committed suicide in June 1993. In his findings, Garcia said he concluded that Freeman is Manson Jr.’s son based on a February 1986 finding by an Ohio judge in which Manson Jr. was ordered to pay child support payments to Freeman’s mother.

“This court finds that Freeman is potentially an … heir of (Manson) assuming (he) died (without a will) and petitioner Kiken can prove Charles Manson Jr. is the son of Charles Manson,” Garcia wrote.

Davis has said the Ohio order remained unchallenged for decades until the current challenges by former Manson pen pal Michael Channels and by Nancy Claassen of Spokane, Washington, who alleges in her court papers that she and Manson had the same mother and that she therefore is his “sole heir-at-law.”

Freeman, Channels and Claassen all are vying to administer the late cult leader’s estate.

Attorney Timothy Lyons, on behalf of Channels, said during a May hearing that Judge Clifford Klein, who previously presided over the case and has since retired, gave no weight to the Ohio court decision. He also said there was no evidence that Manson Jr. made child support payments to Freeman.

Lawyer Dilair Nafoosi, on behalf of Claassen, has said the Ohio ruling dealt with child support and not whether Freeman was a Manson heir.

Klein signed an order in 2019 directing Freeman to take a DNA test, but his ruling was reversed by a three-justice panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal in 2021. Freeman once told Klein that he would not voluntarily agree to DNA testing, but would obey a court order to do so.

Channels had asked for a DNA test of Freeman. In his court papers, Channels said Manson’s 2002 will, filed in Kern County in November 2017, named him as the executor of Manson’s estate.

Freeman has filed court papers stating that probate of the Channels will should be denied because it was created “as a direct result of undue influence exercised by (Channels) over (Manson) and is not, and never was, the will of (Manson).”

The next hearing in the case is scheduled Monday.

Manson suffered from heart disease and other ailments before he died in November 2017 at age 83.

Manson and members of his outcast “family” of followers were convicted of killing actress Sharon Tate — who was eight months pregnant — and six other people during a bloody rampage in the Los Angeles area in August 1969.

Prosecutors said Manson and his followers were trying to incite a race war he dubbed “Helter Skelter,” taken from the Beatles song of the same name.

The Manson clan also stabbed to death grocery magnate Leno La Bianca and his wife Rosemary La Bianca the night after the Tate murders.

Manson was convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Tate, the La Biancas, and four other people at the Tate residence — coffee heiress Abigail Ann Folger, photographer Wojciech Frykowski, hairdresser Jay Sebring and Steven Earl Parent, who was shot in his car on his way to visit an acquaintance who lived in a separate rented guest house on the Tate property.

Manson and followers Charles “Tex” Watson, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and the late Susan Atkins all were convicted and sentenced to state prisons in 1971. Manson also was convicted in December of that year of first-degree murder for the July 25, 1969, death of Gary Hinman and the August 1969 death of Donald Shea.

Manson and the others originally were sentenced to death, but a 1972 state Supreme Court decision caused all capital sentences in California to be commuted to life in prison. There was no life-without-parole sentence at the time.

Manson was denied parole a dozen times.

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