Almost seven years after Charles Manson’s death, a Los Angeles court is being asked to determine if a will purportedly written by the notorious killer is genuine or fake.
Memorabilia collector Michael Channels, 57 – one of three men fighting to be awarded Manson’s $1 million estate – claims the will leaves everything to him and disinherits the cult leader’s children and other relatives.
And new court documents obtained by DailyMail.com show that the two-page will, dated February 4 2002, has just been transferred from the jurisdiction of Kern County, CA where Manson died in jail in 2017, to LA County where the inheritance court battle is being waged.
On July 25, LA Superior Court Judge Ruben Garcia will be asked at a ‘contest of will’ hearing to rule on the authenticity of the Manson ‘will’ which is typewritten except for a hand-written note at the end that includes the words, ‘I’m not in the best spot to rest in peace.’
Channels, from Newhall, CA, says he became friends and pen pals with Manson in the 90s and after visiting him in Corcoran State Prison, CA in early 2002.
He claims that America’s most hated murderer wrote a will leaving him everything he owned, including lucrative rights to his music, art and writings.
The purported will which Channels claims was signed by Manson, also states, ‘I have disinherited both known sons and any unknown children in the present and in the future….’
The other two contenders claiming sole inheritance rights – ex-mixed martial arts fighter Jason Freeman, 48, from Bradenton, FL and LA realtor Daniel Arguelles, 64 – both insist that the will is phony.
Freeman – who claims to be Manson’s grandson – has attacked Channels’ assertion that he’s the sole beneficiary, saying it should be denied because it was ‘a direct result of undue influence exercised by Channels over Manson and is not, and never was, the will of Manson.’
Arguelles – who say 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.
In March last year, Judge Garcia threw out a bid by Arguelles to force his two rivals to give him samples of Manson’s DNA to try to prove his claim of being Manson’s illegitimate son.
Arguelles’ attorneys argued that since Freeman was given possession of the killer’s body by a judge after his death in 2017, ‘He is in the unique position of providing DNA evidence….including but not limited to remains, hair, skin, ash (Manson was cremated), teeth or other samples from decedent…..that could be tested against the DNA of Arguelles.’
The lawyers also said that Channels ‘may have secured DNA evidence of the decedent’ during his unsuccessful 2019 legal effort to force Freeman to take a DNA test.
But Judge Garcia refused to compel Freeman and Channels to surrender any Manson DNA samples they may have and he also turned down Arguelles’ additional demand for the Kern County County Coroner to give up any Manson DNA it has on file.
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.
After Manson was released from a five-year jail stint at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California in late 1958, says Arguelles, he met up in Los Angeles with Arguelles’ mother, Darlene Large Pons, also known as Darlene Large Whitt.
‘His mother and Manson conceived him (Arguelles) in a one-night encounter on or around January 25 1959,’ says Arguelles, who was born November 1 1959.
He contends that his mother – who died in 2020 – had always told him his father was James Arguelles – until 1981 when his ‘mother informed him that James Arguelles was not his father and that she did not know who his real father was.’
Fast forward to July 2015 and Arguelles tried to locate his biological father by sending a DNA sample to Ancestry.com.
The results, said Arguelles, showed a ‘close relative match’ with Michael Brunner – who was one of the original claimants in the long-running fight over Manson’s estate, declaring that he also was a biological son.
The DNA evidence showed that Brunner and Arguelles ‘have a 99.99998% probability that they share the same father,’ he added.
Freeman has challenged Arguelles’ claims, saying in court documents that:-
*Arguelles was adopted, meaning he is ‘not an heir of (Manson) and has no standing;’
*Manson ‘informed third parties that Arguelles was not his biological child;’
*Manson was not named on Arguelles’ birth certificate;
*’Any biological relationship with Michael Brunner does not prove any relationship (with Manson).’
The assertion that he’s Brunner’s half brother poses a major problem for Arguelles’ case – since Brunner himself dropped out of the race to be declared Manson’s offspring, asking the court more than three years to dismiss his claim.
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.
Four people originally filed petitions proclaiming their right to the estate. Two of them, Brunner and Matthew Lentz – who also asserted he was Manson’s kin – had their claims dismissed in 2019, leaving just Freeman and Channels.
Then, in April 2021, Nancy Claasen, – who announced she was Manson’s ‘half-sister’ – threw her hat into the ring, insisting she was ‘sole heir-at-law’ and disputing the claims of both Freeman and Channels. Judge Garcia dismissed her case in 2022.
Freeman was the very first to stake an inheritance claim. He said he learned about his relationship with Manson when he was eleven but his grandmother, Rosalie Willis, who was apparently married to Manson in the 1950s, never spoke about his grandfather.
Freeman has always maintained that his father was Charles Manson Jr. who couldn’t live with his shameful name so changed it to Charles White, and eventually blew his own brains out in 1993.
Channels filed a court motion in 2018 demanding that Freeman submit to a DNA test to prove if he’s related to Charlie Manson.
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 the 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 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.