A new documentary chronicles a young filmmaker’s revelation that she is the granddaughter of convicted murderer and former cult leader Charles Manson.
Sofia Maddox’s new Hulu documentary My Grandfather Charles Manson, out next Wednesday on the streamer and Disney+, chronicles how she came to terms with the disturbing information her father learned from a DNA test.
“I was interested in hearing the opinions of people who knew him, not the media’s interpretation or the prosecutor’s interpretation. I gathered my own opinion about him,” Maddox, 26, also an actress, told People about interviews with former Manson family members.
Sophia Maddox has always been a good girl and her father’s rock as a child, but her quest to get to know her unknown grandfather leads to a shocking discovery: he is CHARLES MANSON. (Disney)
Among those interviews was Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, played by Dakota Fanning in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
Maddox’s father, Daniel, did not confirm his connection to Manson until a DNA test followed his discovery of Michael Brunner – Manson’s reputed son, with whom Maddox has since established a connection – on Ancestry.com in 2022.
Charles Manson. (Disney)
According to family lore, Daniel’s mother, who died in 2022, never said a word about her son’s biological father, although in the late 1960s she realized that Charles Manson was the same Charlie Dear with whom she had a fatal affair.
Maddox said that despite the scandal paving the way for an estrangement of sorts from her father, she is grateful to have uncovered “the truth about my family, not just the… sensationalist one.”
Manson, who masterminded nine murders in 1969, was 83 when he died behind bars in November 2017. At that time, he had served more than 40 years in prison. Manson’s victims included Roman Polanski’s then-pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, celebrity hairdresser and Tate’s friend Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, Wojciech Frykowski and his girlfriend, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary.