35. When he got no Christmas presents himself, he burned his peers’ gifts as punishment
Although Glenna and Bill were at least employed and not career criminals, they were still very poor, and Christmas was not a happy time for Charles. One year, the only present he received was a hairbrush from his grandmother, and he was enraged at the sight of the neighborhood kids with ‘toys of all kinds: wagons, trains, cowboy hats and chaps’. Manson couldn’t stand the humiliation: ‘one day I rounded up all of their toys I could find and carted them home with me… I stacked up some wood and threw the toys on top and started a fire’.