Catherine Share

Catherine Louise "Gypsy" Share (born December 10, 1942) is a former member of Charles Manson's "Family".^[1][2][3]

Early life

Share was born in Paris to a Hungarian violinist father and a German mother. Her parents were both members of the French Resistance movement during World War II, and both committed suicide when their daughter was two. Share's maternal grandmother died in a ghetto in Eastern Europe and both of Share's paternal grandparents died in concentration camps. Before her parents' suicides, her father made arrangements with a French lawyer who was secretly helping the underground to plan his daughter's escape.^[4]

Through her father's arrangements, Share was adopted by a French woman who later married an American psychologist and they relocated to Hollywood, California. Share graduated from Hollywood High School in 1961.^[4] Share's childhood in America was, according to Share, a relatively happy one until her adoptive mother was diagnosed with cancer and committed suicide when Share was 16. Share then lived with her by then blind adoptive father.^[5] After her adoptive father remarried, Share dropped out of college and began wandering California, immersed in the 1960s counterculture. In 1965, Catherine Share cut a single for the Autumn label in San Francisco who were already riding high with the Beau Brummels. The recording, under the name of Charity Shayne, was issued in the UK in the 2000s as a track on the Ace/Big Beat CD "Someone to Love".

Involvement with the Manson Family

In early 1967, Share met Bobby Beausoleil on the set of a softcore porn movie entitled Ramrodder. She eventually began an affair with the aspiring musician and, after meeting Charles Manson through Beausoleil, moved to the "Family"'s location on Spahn's Ranch, where the other Family members nicknamed her "Gypsy".^[1] She was not directly involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders but would testify at the 1970 trial that Family member Linda Kasabian was the mastermind behind the murders in an effort to absolve Manson of any involvement in the crimes.^[5]

In 1971, Share, along with four other Manson followers: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Dennis Rice, Steve "Clem" Grogan and Ruth Ann "Ouisch" Moorehouse involved in a drugs plot concerning fellow Manson Family member Barbara Hoyt, scheduled to give testimony for the prosecution against Manson and others during the Tate/LaBianca murder trial. On September 9, 1971, as Hoyt was preparing to board her flight back to California, she was given a hamburger laced with LSD. Share, Fromme, Rice and Grogan served 90-day sentences at the Los Angeles County Jail for conspiracy to dissuade a witness from testifying. The judge decided the matter was not serious enough to warrant extradition of Moorehouse from Canada, where she was living at the time of the hearing.^[6]

While incarcerated Share gave birth to a son, Phoenix Son on January 5, 1971. The baby was taken from Share and placed into foster care. For years Share refused to confirm the paternity of her son, although refuting that Manson was the father. After her release from prison, she was reunited with her son and confirmed that Steve "Clem" Grogan was the father.^[7]

On August 21, 1971, Share, accompanied by her then-husband Kenneth Como and Family members Mary Brunner, Dennis Rice, Charles Lovett, and Larry Bailey drove a white van to a Hawthorne, California Western Surplus Store. Once inside the store, the group brandished guns and ordered the store patrons and clerks to lie on the ground. They then went about taking 143 rifles from the premises, loading them into their van, while a store clerk managed to trip the silent alarm. The group had previously held up a liquor store.^[8][8] When a police squad car arrived, Share opened fire on the vehicle, putting a hole in the top corner of the windshield. Police gunfire injured Brunner, Share and Bailey..^[8][9]

Brunner and Share were convicted and incarcerated at the special unit created at California Institution for Women as a death row for Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel sentenced to be executed for at the main Manson trial. Share served five years for her participation in the Hawthorne shootout and was released in 1975. Following her release from prison, Share disassociated herself from the "Family" and sought surgical treatment to remove the "X" she and others had burnt and carved into her forehead on Manson's orders during his trial.

After the Manson Family

In 1979, Share was convicted in absentia in the state of California on six counts of mail fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property, and fraudulent use of a credit card. Share had initially fled to Canada and then returned to the United States to serve out her sentence.^[4] In July 2006, Share returned to the remnants of Spahn Ranch to be interviewed about her role in the Manson Family for the series Our Generation on The History Channel.^[10] In 2007, Share was interviewed about her involvement with the Manson Family by forensic psychologist Dr. Michael Stone for the American television series Most Evil on the Investigation Discovery network. Today, Share is a self-proclaimed Christian who has a close relationship with her son and speaks out against cults.^[4]

References

External links

• Internet Movie Database entry