'It's just a matter of time': Cult leader Charles Manson in 'grave condition'
Notorious cult leader Charles Manson has been taken from prison to a hospital in California and is reportedly "gravely ill" with no chance of recovery.
Manson, who is now 83, was imprisoned in 1971 for orchestrating members of his cult, The Family, to slaughter seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, in Los Angeles over two summer nights in 1969.
The inmate was reportedly rushed to Mercy Heart Hospital in Bakersfield on Wednesday.
According to the New York Daily News, Manson has been suffering with various health problems for some time and had to be hospitalised in January for severe intestinal bleeding.
Music producer Ben Gurecki, who posts prison calls with Manson on a YouTube channel, told reporters on Wednesday that it was "just a matter of time" for Manson, who is believed to be battling heart failure.
"His body is shutting down," Gurecki said.
"He is going to leave us this time. He is very, very sick."
Arguably the most famous and well-known cult leader and serial killer in history, Manson instructed his protege Charles Watson to take three female members of his group to a ritzy house in Hollywood on August 9, 1969, and slaughter everyone inside.
The five victims included film director Roman Polanksi's heavily pregnant wife Sharon Tate, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, heiress Abigail Folger, writer Wojciech Frykowski and visiting teenager Steven Parent.
The next night, Manson accompanied the same four members of his cult to an address in Los Feliz, where they brutally stabbed supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary to death.
The gruesome details of the murders have since passed into true crime folklore, with prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's novelised account of the trial Helter Skelter becoming a best-seller.
The book's title refers to a 1968 song by The Beatles from The White Album which Manson claimed was a call to arms in an upcoming race-fuelled Armageddon.
In 2015, the first season of Aquarius, a television series loosely based on the beginnings of the Manson cult, aired in America.
Manson and his fellow murderers were convicted in 1971 and sentenced to death, but they were commuted to life sentences in 1972 during a brief period in which capital punishment was outlawed in California.
Manson, who is serving seven concurrent life sentences, has been denied parole on numerous occasions throughout his decades of imprisonment and is not eligible for release until 2027, when he would be 93.
However, according to US media reports, he is not likely to reach that milestone, with predictions that he is unlikely to leave hospital - where, even at 83, he remains under heavy police guard.
